Meanwhile, Toyota Motorsport does Monte

Two years may sound like a whole lot of time, even if you are building a WRC team. Days turn into months and before you know it, it’s two years gone and you’re heading to your first proper WRC event. For any team, every day counts and every test session is important and valuable. During their WRC presentation, Toyota said team will be busy testing in several different locations all over Europe this year. Not just any locations – they want to learn more about the exact roads, surfaces and conditions awaiting them on actual events in 2017. That being the case, we can expect them to show up in Sweden or Norway, obviously because snow, then Finland for all those jumps and massive speed, maybe Spain for mixed surfaces, naturally Germany for tar and being next door to teams HQ in Cologne. Naturally, Monte Carlo, or rather, mountains in the south of France should also be mentioned, because this definitely is a unique event. For this year, Toyota can scratch Monte off the list, it seems.

Stephane Sarrazin was in charge of a test session which took place on roads very similar (if not exactly the same) to the ones used in actual Rallye Monte Carlo. They were narrow, twisty, with hairpins and technical sections. Add some snow to it and you have a perfect Monte replica, for your testing pleasures.

It is going to be a long wait, but I am confident it will be worth it.