【Japanese Rally Championship Round 9 / Obihiro city】

Shortened Route Creates More Sprint-like Rally Hokkaido
Hiroki Arai Overcomes Trouble To Finish JN-1 Runner-up

JRC Round 9

Date	10-12/09/2021
Venue	Obihiro city, Hokkaido
Weather	Leg1 : Cloudy / Leg2 : Rain
Surface	Leg1 : Dry / Leg2 : Wet (Gravel)
Total distance	669.66km
Total SS distance	86.04km

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The 20th Rally Hokkaido was held from 10th to 12th September. Its field was centered around Rikubetsu Town in the Northern Tokachi area, while Obihiro City hosted the rally. Unfortunately, the event had to be run behind closed doors, as was the case last year, so there was no starting ceremony planned to take place in front of Obihiro Station. And, of course, all drivers, team members, and officials took every possible measure to avoid COVID-19 spread.

This rally has been known for smooth high-speed gravel roads, and it has the largest field area of all Japanese Rally Championship events. However, the route was compressed further this year, and now the rally had nine Special Stages. As the competitive distance became less than 100km by this change, the championship point coefficient in this event was lowered to 1.2.

The change was particularly evident in Sunday’s itinerary, as Leg 2 on the day had only three Special Stages, and its total distance was just 22.64km. This fact meant that Leg 1 on Saturday had 74% of the rally’s total competitive distance. Hence, the drivers knew they needed to push very hard from the opening stage to win the rally because the recovery on the second day would be almost impossible.

The Rally Hokkaido has been included in the JRC calendar 16 times out of its last 19 meetings, and Yokohama Tire users have won 11 times out of 16 championship events. It is another proof of Yokohama’s performance which has grown through the wealth of experience from domestic and overseas rallying fields.

The Yokohama-shoed competitors made a good start in this year’s Rally Hokkaido, as well. The stage winner of SS1 Yam Wakka Short 1(14.54km), which was thought to be essential to take the initiative, was Hiroki Arai / Noritaka Kosaka in Subaru WRC STI. The crew was the winner of the last two events here. And Hiroki’s father Toshihiro Arai in the same car, co-driven by Naoya Tanaka, followed in second by only 0.2 seconds after driving for 14.54km!

SS2 Rikubetsu Long (4.63km) was won by Hiroshi Yanagisawa / Takahiro Yasui, driving Skoda Fabia R5. Regarding the Arais, Hiroki came in sixth and Toshihiro in seventh, but they remained in overall 1-2 at the end of the stage. Then their main rival was the fastest in SS3 Nupripake 1 (12.53km) after a service time. Hiroki finished it in second with 0.9 seconds gap, and Toshihiro was third 1.3 seconds behind the winner. Nevertheless, the younger Arai still held the overall lead at the time.

However, Hiroki’s Subaru had an engine malfunction after the finish of SS3, and its performance was substantially reduced. With such a handicap, Hiroki ended SS4 Yam Wakka Short 2, the rerun of the opening stage, in third, and he was 4 seconds slower than his father. Instead, Toshihiro was the fastest in this stage for the first time in the day and took over as the rally leader.

Then another unexpected thing happened. Toshihiro Arai’s WRX caught fire in its engine bay while driving in SS5 Rikubetsu Long 2. Fortunately, the crew was safe, but they couldn’t continue. Having a glitch in his engine, Hiroki had a hard time for the rest of the day, but he still completed the remaining two stages and came back to the end-of-the-day service. He ended Leg 1 in second.

Rain started to fall in the Tokachi area around midnight. It wasn’t so heavy, but the road surfaces were wet on Sunday morning. Hiroki’s team tried to fix the problem on his engine at the service, but they couldn’t sort it out in time. He had difficulty starting the engine and even prepared himself for retiring from the rally at one time.

Handicapped by the poor condition of his engine, Hiroki was losing the gap with the driver running in third overall. He still had 11.9 seconds at the end of SS9 Otofuke Reverse 1 (6.12km), the first stage of Leg 2, but it was quickly reduced to 3.7 seconds when they finished SS10 Pawse Kamuy 1 (10.40km). Firmly determined to keep second place, Hiroki went full-send in the last stage of the rally, SS11 Otofuke Reverse 2. Eventually, he was beaten by the driver in third by the stage time but managed to maintain a 1.6-second gap with him, so he finished the rally in second after a very tough battle.

Yanagisawa came in fourth, just one place shy of a podium finish. Still, he won SS2 and was the second-fastest in SS5 and SS6 in Leg 1. And after setting the second-fastest stage time in SS7, he was the fastest in the remaining two consecutive stages, SS8 and SS9. So along with the improvement on his Skoda R5 car, his performance here looked very promising.

The class winner of the previous round, ARK Rally Kamuy, Nao Ohtake / Megumi Fujita in Toyota 86 dominated JN-3. In the opening stage, SS1, Ohtake easily won the class by 28 seconds and faster than some of the upper-class competitors. His pace was almost 2 seconds per kilometer faster than his closest rival, and it continued after SS2 as well. Sure enough, he won all stages in Leg 1 and built a more than 40-second margin at the end of the day.

Although he felt something wrong with his gearbox in the second half of Leg1, the big gap with the rest of the field allowed him to nurse the car and cruise throughout Leg 2. By winning this rally, Ohtake and Fujita increased their points to 94.0 and became the championship leader, as his main rival didn’t participate in this round.

Hiroshi Sudoh / Masakazu Arai, driving Suzuki Swift, scored one stage fastest time each in Leg 1 and 2. Sudoh said the things didn’t go smoothly on the car setup. However, the veteran driver had enough experience to steadily complete the stages in Hokkaido, which were still tough even if the rally became shorter than before and finished runner-up in the class.