The 2011 Intercontinental Rally Challenge series visited Republic of Cyprus, one of the popular Mediterranean resorts, for the championship's 11th and final round, Cyprus Rally, held on 3-5 November. Toshihiro Arai took part in this event with the ADVAN equipped Subaru WRC STI R4.

This was the 38th Cyprus Rally which has been a regular fixture of the European Rally Championship series. Besides this, the event had been run with the world championship status from 2000 to 2006 and 2009. For 2007 and 2008, it was incorporated in the Middle-East Rally Championship and, then, it joined in the IRC series since 2010. The rally had long been a conventional gravel event but turned into a mixed surface rally by adding some asphalt roads to its competitive stages.

The host city of the rally was Pafos, the port town in the western part of the island, and stages were placed around the mountain area in the north-east of the city. Leg 1 used two mixed surface stages, while Leg 2 had all three types of stages, gravel, tarmac and mixed. This meant the competitors should have headaches in choosing right tires for the stages.

The tarmac sections had variation of surfaces from smooth to rough and many of the gravel sections were covered with hard rocks which were quite harsh for cars and tires. Therefore, the rally required versatility to adapt to the varied conditions for drivers and cars. But Arai had good records in Cyprus, particularly during the period that the rally was run on the gravel roads, as he had finished in fourth overall in 2001 and claimed the PWRC class win in 2003.

And he also had some experience with the mixed surface format in the Mediterranean island and finished in fourth in the PWRC class in 2009. Considering the progress that his Subaru had shown recently both on gravel and tarmac, expectation for a better result from Arai was high, as he was fighting for the newly introduced Production Cup title.

The rally got underway with the ceremonial start in the city of Pafos on Friday early evening. After driving through the start ramp one by one, the crews headed for SS1 LTV Super Special Stage (3.2km) which was temporarily built in the city center. In this short introducing stage, Arai displayed a very good performance, which reflected his good form in the pre-event testing, and finished in sixth overall by beating not a few S2000 cars.

After making a promising start, Arai continued his consistent drive during the main part of Leg 1, the stages in the mountain area, on Saturday. He finished both of first two mixed surface stages, SS2 Koilinial 1 (24.15km, tarmac 35.5%, gravel 64.5%) and SS3 Salamiou 1 (18.16km, tarmac 64.2%, gravel 35.8%), in tenth overall.

In the second run of the same loop, Arai raised his pace and was the eighth fastest driver in SS4 Koilinial 2 in which gravel roads were dominant. Then, he had a problem with front differential gears around 7km before the finish of SS5 Salamiou 2, which meant he lost the driving force of front wheels and about 30 seconds, but the ex-PWRC champion was still able to finish the stage in ninth. After all, he ended Leg 1 in eighth overall and was the leader of the Production Cup class, in which he was chasing the title crown, with a massive 48 second margin.

Arai drove impressively again in Leg 2 on Sunday. His finishing positions in the all gravel SS6 Gialial 1 (14.82km) was eighth and then he cleared each of the next two stages, SS7 Stavros 1 (15.91km, all tarmac) and SS8 Anadiou 1 (19.15km, tarmac 40%, gravel 60%), with the tenth fastest times. Toshi's best result of the mountain stages came in SS9 Gialia 2 which was the first of the second run of the loop, as he finished it in seventh. This moved him up to seventh overall, before registering the eighth and seventh fastest time in the remaining two stages, SS10 Stavros 2 and SS11 Anadiou 2, respectively.

Eventually, Arai finished the rally in seventh overall and concluded the season with the best result in his 2011 IRC campaign. He also became the winner of Production Cup class in second consecutive event, after the victory in Rally Scotland a month ago, and those two wins delivered him the well deserved Production Cup championship title.

　[Result : 7th (Production Cup Champion)]
"I had some experiences with the mixed surface rally in Cyprus in 2009. But it was still a challenge to choose the right tires because the gravel roads were very bumpy this year and, even on the tarmac stages that I knew from my past experience, there were a lot of dirt and stones on the asphalt surfaces, as everybody was cutting through the corners.
"We had two types of tires this time, ADVAN A036 and A053, and I used both of them by switching the combinations for each stage in Leg 2. This was the first time for me to use A036 in the rally event but they worked really well on the tarmac and gave me a good advantage. A053 also made a significant progress and they were now totally different tires from the ones at the beginning of the season.
"As a result, we managed to clinch the Production Cup title by winning the last two events. I am sure the progress of Subaru WRX STI R4 and ADVAN tires were the two major forces which enabled us to win the title."

"Since the 18 inch tarmac tires weren't allowed to use in this event, we had to rely on only the 15 inch rally tires. Therefore, we had lined up ADVAN A053 for the gravel roads and A036 for the hard-packed gravel and tarmac and didn't make available A006T which we normally use for the tarmac roads. During Leg 2, we switched the tires between A053 and A036 for each stage, according to the type of surfaces.
"Cyprus rally was an unconventional mixed surface event. But we didn't have any puncture even on the roughest gravel and the driver reported good feelings on tires, which was proved by some good stage times. So I felt our tires had achieved our development target.
"We have been developing the tires throughout the year and successfully completed the project to create the line up of tires that can deal with almost all types of surfaces. Now our next mission is to feed back the valuable experience from the season, including those earned from A036 we used in this event, to our road tire products."