Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team have their sights on another home victory at Rally Japan, the seventh round of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship, taking place this week 28-31 May.
The team return to Japan looking to conclude what has so far been a successful first half of the WRC campaign, including five wins from the opening six rallies. They lead the manufacturers’ championship by 93 points and have all five of their drivers inside the top six of the drivers’ championship standings.
Elfyn Evans is leading the championship. The Welsh driver won Rally Japan for the team in 2023 and 2024 and he holds has a 12-point advantage over his nearest competitor, his Japanese team-mate Takamoto Katsuta.
Elfyn said before the event, “Rally Japan is always a special occasion. We get a very warm welcome from everyone in Japan and there’s a nice feel to the rally week and a real drive in our team to do well on Toyota’s home event.
“The roads are very narrow and technical, requiring precision and confidence with the pacenotes and the car. The different date this year should bring hotter temperatures, which will increase the demands on everything in the car. It’s been a good event for us in the past, but the clock always starts at zero for everyone and we’ll have to be at our best to try and score as many points as we can.”
Katsuta is set to receive a hero’s welcome as he returns to home roads after achieving his first two WRC victories earlier this season in Kenya and Croatia. He is aiming to add to the Rally Japan podium he achieved in 2022.
Oliver Solberg is third in the championship, 31 points from the lead, having started this year with a famous Rallye Monte-Carlo victory. He starts Rally Japan in Rally1 machinery for the first time, having won his class with the GR Yaris Rally2 car in 2025.
Sami Pajari scored his maiden WRC podium in Japan last November and has since achieved four more. He sits fifth in the standings. Reigning and nine-time world champion Sébastien Ogier rounds out the top six having taken victory at Rally Islas Canarias in one of four starts so far this year.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto will be another competing on home roads, driving one of seven GR Yaris Rally2 cars entered in the WRC2 class.
Spaniard Alejandro Cachón returns to Rally Japan after winning the category in 2025 and is joined by fellow MSi Racing Team drivers Diego Domínguez and Andrea Lafarja of Paraguay. Hiroki Arai, Norihiko Katsuta and Fumio Nutahara, frontrunners in the Japanese Rally Championship, also compete in their home event.
Since it returned to the WRC calendar in 2022, Rally Japan has been held mostly on narrow and twisting asphalt roads in the forest-covered mountains of the Aichi and Gifu prefectures, around the city of Nagoya.
The move from November to late May should bring higher temperatures, but the chance for rain – which has added to the challenge in previous editions – remains.
