Young Japanese rally driver Hiroki Arai, who is the son of the former Subaru factory driver Toshi Arai, will be making a return to the FIA World Rally Championship after a two year and nine month absence.
Arai was crowned the Japanese Rally Champion in 2020 together with the Arai Motorsport Co., Ltd team, and after judging him on his success and performance, he has been deemed worthy of a seat in the WRC and he has been rewarded with a program in WRC3 together with Stohl Racing.
As he is joining a experiences and highly professional team, Arai will be coached by no other than the former WRC driver Manfred Stohl. who was his dad´s rival from back in the day. The team has acquired a brand-new M-Sport Poland built Ford Fiesta MKII Rally2 car as the vehicle of choice for this programme.
As they will be focusing to further develop the missing international experience now, Arai has been offered the opportunity to join the Italian Rally Championship round of Rallye San Remo on 9-11 April and will be using that as a test event with the main goal is to collect important data and be well prepared for the WRC return.
After the Rallye San Remo, Arai´s program will consist of atleast four WRC rounds where he will be coming to start already at the upcoming Croatia Rally on 23-25 April but the other three round are still not fully confirmed but most likely it will be Sardinia, Belgium and Japan.
