The weight of disappointment lay firmly on his shoulders. In his eyes, he’d not just let himself down, or his team down. He’d let an entire nation down.
“Actually, I was quite confident before the rally already, and everything went quite well,” he said, “It’s very tough of course. I really wanted to deliver the best result ever.”
Takamoto Katsuta wears his heart on his sleeve. At stage-ends, you can tell when he’s not happy due to his quiet demeanor. In last Saturday night’s media zone at Rally Japan, you didn’t need to be an expert in body language to read Katsuta’s emotions.
Fighting for the win of his home event with Toyota team-mates Sébastien Ogier and Elfyn Evans, Katsuta approached a section of Mt. Kasagi 2 too quickly, lost the rear and hit an adjacent plastic barrier that, crucially, was filled with water. That damaged his radiator, broke his power-steering and forced him out of the results for the day as he went OTL working on the car.
It looked as if a second barrier hit, when Katsuta rejoined the stage, was what really did the damage, but the data confirmed it was the first impact that was problematic – offering a small silver-lining for the Japanese.
AloJapan.com