Rally Sweden – What really happened to Takamoto Katsuta?

Second of Rally From Sweden, Takamoto Katsuta has every reason to smile. He just achieved one of the best results of his career and hadn't matched such a performance since Finland last year, a rally he also finished in second place. Yet, frustration was the prevailing feeling for the Japanese driver in Umeå. After a successful first day of rallying, he was leading the standings and could have envisioned a victory, as he did in 2025. In theory, Katsuta could have approached things in the best possible way for the rest of the rally, since he was set to start after all the other Rally1 cars on Saturday, thus benefiting from his position as the provisional overall leader. But things didn't go as planned: from the very first stage of the day, Elfyn Evans took the lead and never relinquished it.

A tire problem for Takamoto Katsuta

On Saturday at midday, after the morning loop, Takamoto Katsuta appeared extremely disappointed in the Media Zone. So much so that few journalists had the opportunity to speak with him, and we were certainly not among them. The inconsolable Japanese driver knew at that moment that he had likely just lost the Rally Sweden to Evans for the second year in a row, despite his overall pace being excellent. The reality, unfortunately, stemmed in part from his tires: Katsuta had apparently inherited a defective set, losing studs on the special stages and therefore, inevitably, grip. While Hankook had, until then, delivered a relatively smooth performance, since the problems encountered by M-Sport For the Korean manufacturer, this is yet another issue that the sole tire supplier could have done without. Under these circumstances, it's difficult to compete…

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Evans was still too strong for Katsuta?

Steven Cho, Hankook's representative in WRCHowever, he did want to clarify the situation with our colleagues at DirtFish: "Indeed, I noticed that Takamoto had lost some studs on his left rear tire," he explained on Saturday at midday. "On a tire that normally has 384 studs, it can happen that some of them come loose. But it's true that we noticed slightly more wear than expected, which we need to analyze more closely." Katsuta also offered a more nuanced perspective later in the weekend: "At the time, I didn't understand what was happening because the car wasn't reacting at all like before, and when you're trying to push hard, it's not comfortable. However, Elfyn was really, really strong this weekend, and I'm not sure it would have made much difference in the end," Taka stated at the end of the rally. Kenya, the next WRC event, could once again offer Katsuta a playground conducive to a great performance.