Last weekend in Japan the President of Toyota, Mr Toyoda drove in the Shinshiro Rally, final round of the Japan Rally Championship in a Toyota RE86 built by TRD.

His co-driver for the event was Noriko Takeshita, well known in the APRC and other international rallies – these are her comments after the event.

I enjoyed rallying with Mr.Toyoda last weekend. Of course he is not as fast as championship drivers, but he has very good skill.

And what is significant, is that he is always looking for better ways of doing things. For example, before recce, we’d planned that I make the pacenotes as Mr Toyoda didn’t have much time to practice pace-noting.

However just as the recce started, he began reading the road and found it better to make them himself. Of course I agreed to his idea.

Even though this was the first rally for him, we were the 2nd quickest on SS4 and finished all the stages safely, 8th of the 12 crews in our class.

I think Mr Toyoda was really satisfied with the result and became more interested in rallying. He has been practicing on circuits and test courses for many years. He even raced in Nurburgring several times.

He loves and enjoys driving cars. I really enjoyed rallying with him. Yeah, it was a great experience!

PHOTOS: Hirokazu Somemiya