Kalle Rovanpera and Elfyn Evans express their thoughts on their battle for this year's title before heading to Central European Rally as there are only two events left until the season finale.
Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT clinched its third consecutive manufacturer title in World Rally Championship earlier this month as its drivers managed to outscore their Hyundai rivals at Rally Chile. The driver's and the co-driver's title will end up to a Toyota crew as Kalle Rovanpera/Jonne Halttunen and Elfyn Evans/Scott Martin are first and second overall respectively on the championship standings. The 2022 WRC Champions have a 31-points advantage over Evans and Martin before the start of Central European Rally in five days and have to score 29 points more than the British pair on the penultimate round of this year's calendar to become champions again.
Central European Rally includes 18 stages and the competitive kilometers reach the 310,01 while it is the first WRC event which will be held in three countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany).
"The manufacturers’ championship is a great achievement for the whole team, and now we will be pushing hard to battle for the drivers’ and co-drivers’ titles in these last events of the season", Rovanpera said.
"When the fight is between team-mates it’s always quite friendly and fair with the same cars, so it should be a good one.
"It’s nice to be back on asphalt with a rally car; in our test I was feeling comfortable in the car straight away and hopefully it will be the same in the rally.
"I’m quite confident that it can be a good event for us: this type of asphalt rally normally suits me best and I have had some good results on these kinds of roads".
Finally, Evans said: "With two rounds to go, there’s still quite a big gap to Kalle in front of us in the championship but it’s not over yet, and we know how quickly things can change in this game.
"We’ll be trying everything we can to have two strong rallies to end the season and we’ll try to put the pressure on.
"This is going to be a new rally for everybody and with stages in three different countries, we need to try and have a setup that can work everywhere.
"With any new rally, it’s difficult to gauge from videos alone just what the stages will be like, but the weather is sure to play a massive part in how dirty the roads get and how much grip will be available".
Photo Credits: Toyota
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