The seventh round of the 2011 Intercontinental Rally Challenge, Barum Czech Rally Zlin, was held on 26-28 August and Fumio Nutarahara/Hakaru Ichino pair entered the rally around the city of Zlin with their Subaru WRX STI spec C R4. For the Japanese pair, this was the second consecutive IRC appearance, following the Acores round in July.

This was the 41st Rally Zlin since its inaugural event in 1971 and the rally has always been a very popular tarmac event in Europe. It also has been a regular fixture not only for IRC but for the European Rally Championship. The rally's headquarters was placed in Zlin, a local city in the southeastern area of the country and close to the neighboring country, Slovakia, with the service park set at Otrokovice lying to the west of the city.

The stages used winding asphalt roads around the hilly area close to the headquarters and had more mid to high speed corners the slower ones. They also had a lot of undulation and the surfaces were rough and bumpy. On top of this, some of the stages have very slippery sections because of gravel on the tarmac; so many crews end their rally with crashes every year.

For Nutahara, this was the first ever tarmac rally with his R4 spec Subaru WRX but he previously had an experience at Rally Zlin, allegedly one of the toughest of the IRC series, in 2010. He had driven a Group N Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX, run by Sjolander Motorsport from Sweden, and finished the rally in 24th overall and seventh in Group N class, despite the fact that he had never driven a left-hand drive rally car before!

For this year's event, the whole route was reversed from that of the 2010 edition but Nutahara was able to make a solid pace note from the 2 days of recce, much helped by the previous experience. The Acores round in July was his first rally in a Subaru WRX R4 and he had struggled to find out a good suspension setup of the gravel spec damper made by Tein, which he had used for the first time. But it was easier for him to adapt this time because he had already been accustomed with the Tein's tarmac dampers, as he has been using them in the asphalt rounds of Japanese Rally Championship series since last year. As a matter of fact, Nutahara and his Subaru showed quite a good shape during the shake down on Friday morning.

After the ceremonial start in the city of Zlin in the early evening of Friday, 26 August, the competition got underway with the Super Special Stage in the city, SSS Zlin (9.36km). Nutahara should have been good at such a compact and technical super special stage but, this time, the suspension setup change he made after the shake down didn't work and he had to settle for finishing the stage only in 46th overall and 43rd in the IRC division.

From the next day, the full blown battles on winding roads across the hilly area began. However, Nutahara finished the first stage of the day, SS2 Biskupice (8.89km), in lowly 37th overall and 36th in the IRC division. Although he made a fine tuning on suspension setup before the next stage, SS3 Pindula (12.95km), he couldn't know if the change was right or not. The stage had to be cancelled because the car which started just in front of him crashed there and the rescue work took considerable time.

The change proved to be a right one and Nutahara was able to drive with a good pace in the SS4 Trojak (28.66km) until he overshot a junction in the second half of the stage, which resulted in losing more than 30 seconds. Thus his position at the end of that stage slipped down to 63rd overall and 50th in the IRC division.

Then, in the last stage of the first loop, SS5 Smentin (11.49km), he was hit by a mechanical problem, after having run for 8km into the stage. Because of a suspension ball joint failure, Nutahara lost the car control and went off the road, which ended up with hitting a tree. Fortunately, he and his co-driver, Ichino, weren't injured at all but the damage to the car was too severe to continue, so they were forced to retire and leave this year's Barum Czech Rally Zlin before finishing Leg 1.

　[Result : Retired]
"I didn't feel uneasy about the Barum Czech Rally because I've already done it last year and I am accustomed with the Tein's tarmac dampers which I've been using in the Japanese championship. But it was still my only second rally with the Subaru WRX R4, so I tried various setups during the shake down session.
"I made a setup change for the Super Special Stage on Friday but it backfired and my drive at the stage wasn't satisfactory. So I tried the opposite direction of setup for the first stage on Saturday, SS2, but then the car was bouncing too much on the bumpy surfaces. I made a bit of adjustment to reduce the bouncing for SS3, which was cancelled, and I finally knew the setup was good enough in the next Stage 4.
"But then I overshot a junction in the last part of the stage and lost about 30 seconds. And, in the Stage 5, a ball joint seemed to come loose about 8km into the stage and the car suddenly went to the right hand side. I was just a passenger and the car went off the road and then hit a tree standing there.
"I had wished to make up for the last year's disappointment but it wasn't satisfactory again this year. But there were a few rewards. I had opportunities to try various setups and I think I learned the basic direction to go on the car's suspension. Our new tires were also getting better, especially in the controllability. I will work harder to achieve my best result in IRC in my next round, Rally of Scotland."

"Building on our experience in Corsica (Round 3, Tour de Corse), we used the new tarmac tires which have different construction from the previous ones. We had three compounds for the new tires, soft, medium and hard, and Nutahara chose the soft, considering the conditions on that day. He seemed to be still in the process of trial and error on the suspension setup but, based on the driver's feedback, I would say the tires worked just as we intended. It was a proof that we were going to the right direction in development works.
"To be honest, it was a shame he had to retire very early. If the car had made more mileage, we would have learnt more about our true pace and tire wear. But, from the view point of a tire engineer, the general feelings on the tires were good and I am sure we successfully improved them on the issues we had found in the previous tarmac round in Corsica.
"We will basically use the same tires in the next asphalt event in Hungary (Round 8, Mescek Rally). We are looking forward to a good performance from Toshihiro Arai who is to drive there."