Rallying
Rallying is also unique in its choice of where and when to race. Rallies take place on all surfaces and in all conditions: asphalt (tarmac), gravel, or snow and ice, sometimes more than one in a single rally, depending on the course and event. Rallies are also run every month of the year, in every climate from bitter cold to monsoonal rain. As a result of the drivers not knowing exactly what lies ahead, the lower traction available on dirt roads, and the driving characteristics of small cars, the drivers are much less visibly smooth than circuit racers, regularly sending the car literally flying over bumps, and sliding the cars out of corners.
A typical rally course consists of a sequence of relatively short (up to about ), timed "special stages" where the actual competition takes place, and untimed "transport stages" where the rally cars must be driven under their own power to the next competitive stage within a generous time limit. Rally cars are thus unlike virtually any other top-line racing cars in that they retain the ability to run at normal driving speeds, and indeed are registered for street travel. Some events contain "super special stages" where two competing cars set off on two parallel tracks (often small enough to fit in a football stadium), giving the illusion they are circuit racing head to head. Run over a day, a weekend, or more, the winner of the event has the lowest combined special and super special stage times. Given the short distances of super special stages compared to the regular special stages and consequent near-identical times for the frontrunning cars, it is very rare for these spectator-oriented stages to decide rally results, though it is a well-known axiom that a team cannot win the rally at the super special, but they can certainly lose it.
Takamoto Katsuta
At the start of his campaign with Mäkinen and Toyota, Katsuta would participate in selected rallies while practicing full-time in Finland, under Mäkinen's supervision. Katsuta's first rallies with Tommi Mäkinen Racing were in local Finnish and Latvian events, driving a Subaru Impreza WRX. Beginning in 2016, Katsuta would be rallying with a very experienced co-driver, Daniel Barritt. Katsuta experienced intermediate success in local Finnish rallies, before being supplied with a Ford Fiesta R5 for the Rally Estonia, his first major long-distance rally in FIA-homologated 4-wheel drive machinery. This was also his first start in the European Rally Championship. He failed to finish the event after crashing in the second leg. Despite this, Mäkinen promoted Katsuta and Hiroki Arai to their first World Rally Championship start at Finland, rallying in the WRC-2 Class. Katsuta would finish 12th in class, sixteen minutes behind the class winner.