DAVID EVANS

“Toyota was banned from the WRC...”

There was so much to talk about in Spain. There was the championship fight, the return of the legends (including Volkswagen), tyres, weather, Barcelona’s frustrating one-way systems, old cars and bull fighting.

And it’s to yesterday to which I turn. Yesterday being 1995, via lunch with legendary Belgian journalist Michel Lizin, who introduced me to Maurice Guaslard, team manager at Toyota Team Europe between 1990 and 1995.

Rewind 23 years and head north back up the coast to Lloret de Mar. Press record, sit back, listen and marvel at every team manager’s biggest nightmare, the one where the world’s biggest car maker is caught cheating and knows full well it will be thrown out of the World Rally Championship.

Juha Kankkunen, a driver not known for his love of, or pace on asphalt, was rocketing away with the 1995 Catalunya Rally in his Toyota Celica Gt-four. Then, on the Capafons stage, he crashed. And the scrutineers decided to take a peak at the bent and broken #2 ST205.

“Even now,” smiled Guaslard thinly, “it’s still a very sensitive subject. Too many people knew and maybe the wrong people knew. I knew. I knew what was going on.

“We had been doing some [engine] test on the bench and the benefit was obvious out of tight corners. But, for me, the risk was too high to go with this system. It wasn’t necessary, we didn’t have to win. The car was so perfect – we had spent so long testing with Juha and everything was working. Juha was comfortable in the car and on these roads.

“We had developed the [illegal variable] restrictor a long time before. We developed a lot of things which weren’t authorised or legal. But, don’t forget, you do this as part of the engine development and the restrictor would have been used on the bench to stress the engine.

“[TTE president] Ove Andersson knew about this, he knew about everything. No decision was taken in that team without him knowing. And the part was in the car and in the engine during the event – but it was not supposed to be there for the whole time. It was not supposed to be there at the end. But then Juha crashed.”

The team was summoned to the stewards. Scrutineers had found something. Hours later, the game was up. Days later, TTE was out of the world championship. Banned for 12 months.

“Some people said it was a shock,” said Guaslard. “It was not a shock. We knew straight away that we would be ejected. There was no need to start the party, instead we knew it was time just to pack up and go. There was nothing else to do – we played with fire. But this was the old time when everybody played with fire, the only thing you had to be sure of was that you did not to get burned. We got burned.”

Lunch on Thursday was over way too soon. Not much has the edge over Hyundai’s pasta, but Guaslard’s road back to 1995 did.