2025 Asia Cross Country Rally: Chayapon Yotha, Mitsubishi Ralliart return to top step
Things did not go Mitsubishi’s way at the 2024 Asia Cross Country Rally as Chayapon Yotha went from leading the race to retiring with a mechanical failure on the penultimate day. After a year back at the drawing board, they returned to the AXCR with a vengeance that paid off tremendously.
Yotha and Katsuhiko Taguchi entered the 2025 race with a shorter yet more durable Triton, which seemed to be the right move. Although Yotha did not win any stages, he scored a top-ten finish in every stage with fairly limited issues. The only “major” problems he encountered were in Stage 5 and at the start of the final leg. He got stuck in the mud in the former, but still finished ninth. Likewise, he was already up by 10:42 entering Stage 8 when the cooling system malfunctioned just before he began the Selective Section. Fortunately, his teammate Kazuto Koide swooped in to help out.
As in SS5, he placed ninth to comfortably seal the victory. It is his and Mitsubishi’s second in the AXCR after 2022, when he won in the debut AXCR for the revived Team Mitsubishi Ralliart rally raid program.
“We’ve competed in the Asia Cross Country Rally four times. With two wins, we’ve brought our win rate back up to 50%,” commented team director Hiroshi Masuoka. “Right now, I’m relieved. Last year was very disappointing, but everyone on the team used it as motivation and worked hard all year. I’m so happy all our hard work has finally paid off, and I believe this victory was achieved through the power of teamwork. Winning was all we thought about this year, so I’m very happy our dream has come true.”
Yotha and Koide’s other colleague Katsuhiko Taguchi was fourth in class with a stage win. Koide settled for 14th; while his duties were mainly support roles for Yotha and Taguchi, his own hopes of contending were ruined by a DNF on the first day.
Toyota won all but one stage, but attrition gradually knocked them out of contention. Natthaphon Angritthanon led early only to be taken out of contention by a suspension failure in Stage 3, while SS2 winner Tubagus Adhi Moerinsyahdi slid off the course. Their problems left defending champion Mana Pornsiricherd as the last hope to defeat Mitsubishi, but he spent the rest of the race trying to catch Yotha to no avail.
While Yotha relied on consistency to win the Auto overall, Yoshio Ikemachi won the Moto title for a fourth time by racking up stage wins. He suffered a neck injury in a Stage 5 crash, but rebounded by winning another stage. 2024 bike victor Norihisa Matsumoto was second in M2.
Bailey Cole won his class and joined Yotha and Pornsiricherd on the overall podium in his maiden AXCR. His Ford Raptor colleague Michael Freeman fell out of contention, leaving Cole to fight with Thongchai Klinkate. The American even defeated 2023 AXCR overall champ Takuma Aoki.
131 Off-Road 
Leave a comment