page_title: Takamoto Katsuta
section_title: 2018: victory and increased support from Toyota
hierarchical_section_title: Takamoto Katsuta / Rallying career / 2018: victory and increased support from Toyota
caption_attribution_description: Español: Tramo de Ponte de Lima. English: Stage of Ponte de Lima.
context_page_description: Takamoto Katsuta is a Japanese rally driver. He currently rallies for the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT in the World Rally Championship. He rose to prominence after taking a surprise victory in the WRC-2 class at the 2018 Rally Sweden.
context_section_description: After his breakout onto the international scene in 2017, Katsuta would begin to enjoy more successes in 2018. He began with a 3rd-place overall finish at the Arctic Lapland Rally, one of the biggest local rallies in Finland. Then at the Rally Sweden, after winning 10 of the 19 special stages, Katsuta won the World Rally Championship-2 class, finishing 11th overall. He won by just 4.5 seconds from Škoda factory driver and then-reigning WRC-2 champion Pontus Tidemand. After this surprise success, Katsuta and team-mate Hiroki Arai continued to rally in the European WRC events, albeit without reaching the level of success achieved at Sweden.
caption: Katsuta driving a Ford Fiesta R5 at 2018 Rally de Portugal.
exif: {"Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image ExifOffset": "78", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "202", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "15240", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated"}