2021 Japanese Rally Championship Round 6 Report

【Japanese Rally Championship Round 6 / Takasaki City】

Montre Relocates Its Base to Takasaki City
Leg 2 Sees Different Conditions Between Only Two Stages

JRC Round 6

Date 11-13/06/2021
Venue Takasaki city, Gunma
Weather Leg1 : Fine / Leg2 : Cloudy & Rain
Surface Leg1 : Dry / Leg2 : Dry & Wet (Tarmac)
Total distance 290.25km
Total SS distance 61.22km
2021 JRC Round 6

After touring around Aichi, Saga, and Kyoto Prefectures, the 2021 Japanese Rally Championship visited Gunma Prefecture for the sixth round of the series, Montre 2021. In the original ten-round calendar, the championship was planned to start in Gunma, with Rally of Tsumagoi, which was supposed to be its only snow event. However, as the Tsumagoi round was canceled, Montre was the first rally held in the Kanto area this year.

The fourth round in Ehime, in the Shikoku area, had also been postponed from early May to late October. Therefore, the nominal sixth round, Montre, was the fourth meeting. While the four rallies that were held, including this round, were fought on asphalt roads, the following three are gravel rallies. And the championship will be concluded with the final two rounds on the tarmac again.

This year’s version of Montre relocated its base from Tsumagoi Village, which hosted the rally until 2019, to Takasaki City, which has the largest population in the Prefecture. The service park was placed at G-Messe Gunma (Gunma Convention Center). The center, which officially opened in April 2020, is close to the central train station of Takasaki and in the city center. So this was a significant change from the rally’s pastoral Tsumagoi era.

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The itinerary was quite smallish, considering the current pandemic situation, and had only three Special Stages (SS) during the two days, which was very unusual. On the first day, Saturday, had just one SS, with the remaining two on Sunday, but all three stages were relatively long ones, as SS1 was 21.92km long and SS2 and 3, using the same route two times, were 19.65km.

The competitors had to report to the reception desk on Friday. And everyone involved in the event, including drivers, team members, and officials, was required to have the antigen test for the coronavirus beforehand in order to prevent further spread of infection.

After the recce in the morning hours on Saturday, the rally’s start was scheduled late in the afternoon. The stages of this event used the so-called Super Rindo (means arterial forest roads) that spanned five communities, Fujioka City, Kanna Town, Nanmoku Village, and Ueno Village. Although some local rally events used the roads in the past, they have never been used in the Japanese Championship rallies in recent years. Therefore, even Gunma-based competitors had little knowledge about the stages, with only a few exceptions.

With only three long and unaccustomed stages ahead of them, no competitor would have the luxury of controlling the pace in the beginning. Consequently, the competitors needed to do a diligent recce because the situation required them to have more accurate pace notes than usual. And after the recce, many drivers left similar comments, like “it’s high speed and challenging.”

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The first car started SS1 Grandma Kimura (21.92km), the sole stage of Leg 1, at 16:48. For your information, the unusual stage name is derived from a local old lady who has enthusiastically supported rallies in this area. The stage itself required a high level of driving skill because of some intricate undulations here and there, and its average speed was incredibly high.

Hiroshi Yanagisawa / Takahiro Yasui in Skoda Fabia R5 set the fastest stage time here, followed by Fumio Nutahara / Shungo Azuma, driving Toyota GR Yaris, 3.5 seconds behind. This meant the rally started with Yokohama users’ one-two. Yanagisawa’s stage time, 14’30”7, showed that his average speed was more than 90km/h!

Contending in the same JN-1 class with them, the winner of the de facto season opener, Shinshiro Rally, Toshihiro Arai / Naoya Tanaka in Subaru WRX STI, was another favorite in this rally, as Arai is also based in Gunma Prefecture as Yanagiwasa is. Unfortunately, Arai damaged one of his tires when he drove over a pothole about 7km from the stage’s start. As a result, they had to change the tire on the stage, dropping out of contention for a win.

Another Gunma-based driver, Genki Takeuchi driving Subaru BRZ with Satoshi Kimura, was the favorite for the JN-3 class victory. He was one of a few drivers who had previous experience with the roads used for the stage. However, he crashed the car in this first stage and was forced to retire.

Fortunately, the crew could walk away from the wreck, but the stage had to be ended, as it happened in the part where the road was extremely narrow. So the subsequent competitors just went through this stage and received a equal notional time for it, which meant they only had two remaining stages to fight against their rivals.

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Leg 2 on Sunday consisted of two stages, the identical route being run twice, but there was no service time between them. Since the forecast said it would start to rain around noon, the competitors had to consider the possibility that the road surfaces would become wet at some point or another. SS2 began under the dry condition at 9:18, but the rain started to fall when the last car was about to finish the stage. While the rain eased off when SS3 got underway at 12:16, the road surface was totally wet.

Yanagisawa set the second-fastest time in SS2 and headed to the final stage, leading the rally by 3.1 seconds. To fend off the rival who followed him, he went all out, and he was about five seconds faster at the unofficial timing point about 6.5km from the finish. However, in the final technical section, he made a costly mistake and spun. As a result, Yanagisawa had to settle for second place, but he still got on the podium.

Nutahara struggled a little and lost ground in Leg 2, but he added some valuable championship points by finishing in fifth. On the other hand, Arai had a problem again soon after the start of SS2, as one of the power steering hoses of his car came off. He had no choice but to retire the car, but he vowed to catch up in the gravel rallies from the next round.

In the JN-3 class, Seiji Yamaguchi / Kenta Satonaka in Toyota 86 ended SS2 in third by setting the third-fastest time. Despite his 16.5 second deficit to the driver in second when he started SS3, Yamaguchi managed to finish the rally runner-up with the second-fastest stage time. This was his first podium finish since the ninth round of 2019, Rally Highland Masters.

That 2019 version of Highland Masters was the last event in which a circuit race veteran Manabu Orido took part. He returned to rallying in this round, sharing Toyota 86 with his co-driver, the 2019 JRC champion Mami Yamamoto. Orido attracted much attention, but he went off the road and retired the car in SS2 due to a problem with the ABS.

DRIVER VOICE

Hiroshi YANAGISAWA [Skoda Fabia R5]

—Result : 2nd. in the JN-1 class—
“Gunma is my home area, but we had almost no previous experience on the roads which used for the Special Stages in this event. Because the tires suited to the road surface, we managed to end the first day as the rally leader, but I spun in SS3 on the second day… While I did all I could do, the result was disappointing, because I missed out on a chance to win by that spin. This year, we had to start from learning my new car, and now I kind of feel we made a certain progress on understanding how to drive the car after driving intensively these long stages. We also found a good set up which leads to better stage times. So I think we learned many things that would be helpful in the coming rallies.”

Seiji YAMAGUCHI [TOYOTA 86]

—Result : 2nd. in the JN-3 class—
“We could use ADVAN A052 but opted for ADVAN A08B until the end of Leg 2. Some rain was forecasted, but I thought it would be okay with A08B because we drove throughout the previous round in Tango with them. Leg 1 was cancelled before we tried the stage, so we didn’t know how fast we were, although I drove the stage partly. And, as there was no midday service in Leg 2, we had no choice but to use the tire we started with, plus those we carried as spares, to the end. It was stressful for me that we had to fight through two long stages without any opportunity for tire change or set up change. But I just had to do all I could. That was the situation. At the end of the day, I feel it wasn’t too bad because we could reduce the gap with our main rival in SS3, comparing with that in SS2, even though the conditions turned to wet.”