\u201cWhat a great weekend,\u201d said Evans. \u201cI have to say a huge thanks to the team who gave us an amazing car again on Tarmac, and thank you to Morizo-san for all his support. Hopefully this win can act as a token of my appreciation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of the championship, even though we lead it\u2019s still too early to really talk about it. We have to just enjoy this win, our third at Rally Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ogier cut a frustrated figure at times in Japan, stating before the rally he had eyes only for victory but having to settle for the runner-up spot. The nine-time champion rued the 16.7s\u00a0he dropped to Evans on SS2 (starting the stage sixth compared to first) and also struggled to get the most from the Hankook tires on longer stages.<\/p>\n
However second place was the 118th podium of Ogier\u2019s career, putting him two behind S\u00e9bastien Loeb\u2019s record of 120.<\/p>\n
Pajari meanwhile won four of the 20 stages en route to his podium finish, fending off Katsuta by 12.1s.<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry for the Japanese fans,\u201d Katsuta said. \u201cWe are not able to take even a podium, so sorry for them. Still my dream continues, so I keep pushing. I try next year, try to get a victory for you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhat a great weekend,\u201d said Evans. \u201cI have to say a huge thanks to the team who gave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[139134,42,43,87697,228869,40,38,41,39,87700,139135],"class_list":["post-454067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-elfyn-evans","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-rally-japan","tag-rally-japan-2026","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wrc","tag-wrc-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}