Rally de Portugal: Toyota expands to three entries for Rally Portugal

The Toyota Gazoo Racing squad will bolster its ranks to a three-car entry for Rally Portugal with WRC2 star Esapekka Lappi joining regulars Jari-Matti Latvala and Juho Hanninen for the sixth round of the 2017 World Rally Championship. Lappi, a former European Rally Champion and reigning WRC2 Champion, has made a handful of WRC entries with Skoda in the intermediate category and will step up to the factory Toyota squad in Portugal.

Toyota says Lappi’s entry will be used with the main objective of testing the Yaris WRC machine at the challenging gravel event on the 19-21 May.

The Finnish driver is relishing the opportunity to drive the Toyota WRC machine in racing conditions and is keen to impress the team having joined at the start of the season as a test driver.

“I’ve been able to test before the rally in Portugal, which has given me a good taste of some future development directions, but these may not be the conditions we experience when it comes to the actual competition,� Lappi said. “It’s obviously very exciting for me to be starting my first rally in the Yaris WRC: the opportunity I’ve been waiting for all of my life.

“But this is team effort, and my role is to collect as much data as possible for the team to develop the car further.

“The most important thing is to finish: never easy on such a challenging event like Portugal. For my own experience too, I need to make sure that I do all the stages, so we’re going to take a very calm and focussed approach to the rally.�