This one’s for you Taka. If Rally Estonia director Urmo Aava gets his way, next year’s Rally Estonia could deliver the longest jump in World Rally Championship history.
The goal is simple: to watch a car fly for 0.1 kilometers. Or 100 meters. Takamoto ‘Japan Airlines’ Katsuta loves a leap in a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 and this one will be right up his street.
Aava is a great innovator and one of the primary driving forces behind Rally Estonia, which has been one of the most pioneering events in the WRC since it arrived to get world rallying back on the road in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. His thinking is clear: give people a reason beyond the rally to come and watch.
“If you think about somewhere like New Zealand,” Aava told DirtFish, “people go there for the rally, but also for the scenery. We need to find stories, rallying needs stories. I had been thinking about this jump thing for a while. Places like Yellow House in Finland are jumping between 50 and 60 meters.
“We thought about 70 meters, but if you’re doing 70, then why not try to fly 100 meters and make a story. I have the place in my head on the route. Take off speed must be around 180 [km/h, 111mph], so close to the maximum. But you don’t fly high, you fly long – the place has a natural height difference with the road dropping away.