{"id":2372,"date":"2025-11-06T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/?post_type=news&p=2372"},"modified":"2025-11-09T10:25:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T01:25:45","slug":"ss1-overview-and-day-end-quotes","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/news\/topics\/ss1-overview-and-day-end-quotes\/","title":{"rendered":"SS1 Kuragaike Park overview and day-end quotes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On November 6 in Aichi\u2019s Kuragaike Park, the 2025 Rally Japan opened with SS1, where Toyota\u2019s Kalle Rovanper\u00e4 (GR Yaris Rally1) set the fastest time in what will be his final Rally Japan before moving to formula racing. Earlier in the day, teammate Elfyn Evans topped the shakedown with Takamoto Katsuta second, confirming Toyota\u2019s strong pace ahead of the rally\u2019s six stages scheduled for Day 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Official Results<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Driver Quotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elfyn EVANS<\/strong>
Not the best afternoon for us, especially the opening stage. We lost a lot of time. Otherwise, we aren\u2019t too far behind, but not that happy with today. I think the feeling in the car isn\u2019t as efficient as we need to go faster. I\u2019m pushing more but going slower. So we need to find some more performance. It\u2019s all very close and everyone\u2019s trying to win. Ultimately, it\u2019s the result at the end of a rally that counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some places on the road were dirty but others dry and grippy. Some elements of the car were better this morning. Some parts of the setting worked well and others different. It is always a challenge to get it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

S\u00e9bastien OGIER<\/strong>
I think we can be pleased. It has been a good day. We had a good morning and pushed harder in the afternoon. I rarely push to the maximum. I always leave enough room to be in control. In the first pass there is always some uncertainty about many parameters that very often cause me not to give my maximum speed. But often in the afternoon when I feel like everything is dialed in I can push a bit harder. So we have created a reasonable gap and it\u2019s nice to be in this situation. Of course, we need to beat Elfyn, that\u2019s the goal we came to in the week. Our other goal is to win the rally. The Super Sunday is going to play a big role but we have made a good start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kalle ROVANPER\u00c4<\/strong>
We pushed really hard, obviously we needed to. Tomorrow will aim to have a bit of enjoyment and climb up position. The car was running well in the afternoon. Tomorrow we will try to get up to the top 10. Not the best start. It is what it is. It seems we\u2019ll be the first car on the road tomorrow. So we will try to enjoy the driving. We don\u2019t really have a chance to win the rally but we will try to catch all the Rally 2 cars and see where we land. The weather looks like the weather and although we can\u2019t change the set up that much we will try to be as prepared as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takamoto KATSUTA<\/strong>
Of course it\u2019s nice to be in 2nd place. It could be better, could be worse as always. A bit up and down. Sometimes I was running really well in the car and other times I was struggling. Not sure why but maybe we can figure it out tonight. One of the trickiest sections in Sagami I didn\u2019t push too hard but Seb took a lot of speed in there. So maybe I could have pushed harder there. We knew we might lose a bit of time. But it\u2019s a long weekend and it looks like the weather might be tricky so anything can happen. I can push harder, but we need to find a balance in the stages that are a little different from today. The surface will be a bit different. The tarmac feels like it has more grip, so I need to see how it works with this car and this tire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sami PAJARI<\/strong>
It\u2019s still just the beginning. A lot can happen. We had a fairly solid day and close fight with the others. We were only a few seconds different in a lot of places. I\u2019m quite happy with it but obviously I\u2019d like to run a little faster. It\u2019s nice to see how well we are performing. But it\u2019s not a miracle, was hoping for something like this and I knew that if I got a good setup in the car I could get a good result. At other tarmac rallies this year I have performed well so I am confident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ott T\u00c4NAK<\/strong>
I don\u2019t think today has been too much of a challenge for us. We have been consistent. We\u2019re not really on the pace but not having huge problems. I am mostly happy with the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thierry NEUVILLE<\/strong>
We\u2019ve been having an issue all day since stage 2. We\u2019ve been doing set up changes all day to try to get more speed. A new differential and dampers. Tomorrow we\u2019ll start again with something new. We need to try some new things to get more speed. We\u2019re going to work on the kinematics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adrien FOURMAUX<\/strong>
I fought quite well with the balance we had today. I didn\u2019t really change the car settings and push with the car I had. I think that worked because we overtook Sami and we\u2019re not so far away from the rest of the top group. I can\u2019t really explain how but we are running quite well at the moment. It\u2019s never easy to go into a rally immediately with a perfect balance, so I\u2019ve taken the approach of pushing with the balance I have and thinking about changing the settings later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2378,"parent":0,"template":"","cat_news":[2],"tag_news":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2399,"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2372\/revisions\/2399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cat_news","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cat_news?post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"tag_news","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rally-japan.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tag_news?post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}