When Tommi Mäkinen Racing took over the development from scratch of the Toyota Yaris WRC car ahead of the season 2017, many doubted the competitiveness of your project. The four times champion of the WRC refused to use precious resources of Toyota, and he pitched his team in Jyväskylä (Finland), far from what could be considered a scenario of a logistic environment. The team kept the silence for an answer and worked on the Toyota Yaris WRC with which it has been faced with a 2017 from the computer defined as the “year of learning”. Two victories and five podiums after, we can say that Tommi Mäkinen gave less missteps of what is presumed.
Since Tommi Mäkinen was able to convince Aki Toyota, head of Toyota, be the ideal person to spearhead the return of the japanese brand in the WRC, the project has taken a clear paint Finnish. The team settled its base in Jyväskylä, and we opted for a trifecta of pilots formed by Jari-Matti Latvala, Esapekka Lappi and Juho Hänninen. The first has recovered his best version, the second is a star in the making and the third party, without the shine in the competition, has managed to develop a Toyota Yaris WRC alongside Tommi Mäkinen much faster than what was envisioned by Sébastien Ogier when he tested the car.
The victories of Latvala and Lappi and the podiums of the three members of the team have left patent that where some saw drawbacks, Mäkinen has given you the right path. The freedom of riding on the dirt roads of Jyväskylä has been very well to a Toyota Yaris WRC very fast and effective, especially in rallies, ground and high speed. The tranquility of working without media pressure has also been a point in favor of a project that has saved the theoretical logistical problems with the construction of the two places are outsourced in collaboration with DHL in the airports of Stuttgart and Barcelona.
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