The pinnacle of wourld rallying events returned to Japan in October. The 4th Rally Japan was held in the Tokachi district near the host town of Obihiro as usual. The total length of 27 special stages, including a few gallery stages, was 350.19km. The longest stage of the event, the SS12/16 Puray was 34.96km long which represented this large scale international rally event.
　
As the date of the event was more than a month later than usual, the winter season was coming to Hokkaido. Actually, the first snow fall of the season was reported just before the event and quite low temperatures, especially in morning and evening, were expected. Therefore, ADVAN had brought prototype rally tires with a super-soft compound that had been originally developed for overseas rallies.
　
On Thursday, October 25th, the ceremonial start was held on a closed public road in front of Obihiro railway station. As many as 64 thousand people crowded along the road, cheering and sending off each competitor.
　
Fumio Nutahara, driving ADVAN-PIAA Lancer, was the PWRC winner of Rally Japan last year. After his overwhelming win in a Japanese Rally Championship event a fortnight ago, many expected his first PWRC win of the season at his home in Tokachi.
　
Nutahara started the SS1 with super-soft prototype tires and set the second fastest time of the PWRC class. After some more quick stage times, he placed third at the end of section 1. Considering the higher temperatures and the surfaces that were to become rougher, he chose the soft compound tires at the service before proceeding to section 2.
　
This year's Rally Japan was very eventful and some of the top contenders in the WRC class fell into retirement early. And PWRC wasn't an exception. In the SS6, the PWRC class leader at that time, Patric Flodin, made a course off which cost him a major time loss and then Toshihiro Arai took over the lead position and also made the same mistake. Consequently, Nutahara's quick and consistent pace put him in the top slot.
　
After finishing Leg 1 as the leader, expectations for Nutahara's back-to-back win grew higher. But he lost 15 seconds due to an engine stall in SS12 and his attempt to recover it in SS14 Sipirkakim resulted in a heavy crash. Soon after the start of that stage, he hit a guard rope pole on the left side of the car and a rear control arm was badly damaged. Although a re-start (by the application of SupeRally rule) was considered, it wasn't allowed by the FIA for safety reasons and Nutahara was forced to retire.
　
After Nutahara's premature dropout, Leszek Kuzaj gradually came up through the ranks. Despite the Subaru Impreza driver making several course offs and spins, his enduring drive was duly reflected in his position and eventually finished third with a car that wasn't in perfect conditions. Afterwards, the car that finished in second was disqualified by the post event scrutineering, which promoted Kuzaj to the runner-up position.

"I chose the super-soft tires in the morning and then the soft compound for the afternoon. Those were prototype rally tires that had been introduced in Rally Japan last year. After a year's development work, the tires gave me more control irrespective of surfaces.
"I was very disappointed with the retirement because I was able to put some good stage times using super-soft tires without any worry about tire wear."

"In the PWRC, the rule obliges us to register the tires we use beforehand. For this event, we registered 30 tires in total which consisted of 12 super-softs and 18 softs after consultation with the team, taking into account the information from the drivers during the recce and the weather forecast.
"The date of this year's event was nearly two months later than that of the previous years, so we had to bring tires that were totally different in specifications.
"The performance of the new super-soft tires was satisfactory under very difficult conditions in this event, since those were especially developed for low temperature environments and wet surfaces."