DOLGELLAU’S Elfyn Evans is looking to end the FIA World Rally Championship season on a high at Rally Japan.

His Toyota Gazoo Racing World Rally Team will seek to wrap up another successful campaign a their home rally on 16-19 November.

Just as in 2022 when the event made a welcome return to the WRC calendar, TGR-WRT will arrive for the final round on Japanese roads having already secured a hat-trick of championship titles.

The team clinched the manufacturers’ title at round 11 of 13 in Chile, before Kalle Rovanperä and Jonne Halttunen claimed their second successive drivers’ and co-drivers’ crowns at last month’s Central European Rally.

Elfyn Evans was a contender for victory in Japan a year ago and arrives in second place in the drivers’ standings, seven points ahead of Thierry Neuville (Hyundai). Sébastien Ogier also showed the pace to win in Japan last year, and will aim for the fourth victory of his partial 2023 schedule.

Evans said: “Rally Japan is going to be an important rally for myself and the team, and we obviously want to finish the season on a high.

“It’s definitely not an easy rally to go to, but we were in contention for the win until quite late on last year and we would really like to put that right.

“Hopefully we can find that same kind of pace this time around.

“Even though we know most of the stages from last year, there are still some unknowns because we can’t test on those kind of roads beforehand.

“The setup is therefore a bit of a guess based on what we had last year and what we’ve learned since, but we will do our best to adapt.”

Rally Japan takes place on demanding asphalt roads in the mountains of the Aichi and Gifu prefectures, near the city of Nagoya. Many of these are technical and narrow in nature, twisting through forests with constantly changing grip levels.

The service park will again be located at Toyota Stadium, which this year, in addition to the start and finish ceremonies, will itself host competitive action. This super special will run as the first stage on Thursday evening, and again at the end of Friday and Saturday. Friday is the longest day of the rally at 133.26 competitive kilometres and includes a familiar trio of stages north-east of Toyota City to be run twice either side of mid-day service.

Saturday takes the action south around Okazaki, where two passes of a super special will precede a mid-day tyre fitting zone. The morning’s opening two mountain tests are repeated in the afternoon before a further stage near Shinshiro and the return to Toyota Stadium. Six stages will conclude the rally on Sunday, taking the event north-east to Nakatsugawa where another tyre fitting zone splits two loops of three stages.