Katsuhiko Taguchi and co-driver Takahiro Yasui won the Asia Cross-Country Rally on August 15, bringing their Mitsubishi Triton home in 12 hours 58 minutes 20 seconds — 2 minutes 25 seconds clear of the Toyota Hilux Travo of Mana Pornsiricherd and Kittisak Klinchan. The classification is provisional at the time of writing.
It is Team Mitsubishi Ralliart's second AXCR title in a row and its third since 2022, and it is the result the team said it wanted. What changed is which car delivered it. In its pre-event release Mitsubishi said it was chasing back-to-back titles "with Chayapon at the forefront" — Chayapon Yotha, the Thai driver who won the rally in 2022 and 2025. Yotha's rally came apart in the second half. Taguchi, who had said he came to "compete for the overall win" on his fourth attempt at the event, was the one still there at the end.
How Taguchi protected the lead on Leg 6
The 31st running of the rally covered roughly 2,000 km from Pattaya to Phitsanulok between August 9 and 15. By the final morning it was a two-car argument: Taguchi led Mana and Kittisak of Toyota Gazoo Racing Thailand by 5 minutes 21 seconds.
Leg 6 was the shortest competitive day of the week — 239.32 km in total, but only 58.62 km of it against the clock, on rough forest tracks in the mountains of Nakhon Thai district, with log bridges, potholes and ditches. Short does not mean safe. A puncture on a stage that brief costs a disproportionate share of any margin.
Mana and Kittisak attacked it and took the leg in 1:05:40. Taguchi and Yasui did not: the organizer's own report describes them declining to chase the stage win and driving to avoid punctures and mistakes, coming through third on the leg in 1:08:36. They gave up nearly three minutes of their buffer and still had 2 minutes 25 seconds in hand at the finish — which is the entire point. The last stage of a six-day cross-country rally is won by completing it.
Defending winner Chayapon Yotha fell out of contention
Yotha was genuinely in this rally for four days. He ran as high as sixth and was still seventh overall after Leg 4. Then engine trouble ended his challenge, and the provisional results show his #101 Triton taking maximum stage times on both of the last two legs, with penalties of eight hours on Leg 5 and nine hours on Leg 6. He is listed 36th overall at 34:48:43.
Mitsubishi's third car had an even shorter competitive rally. Kazuto Koide and Eiji Chiba — who said before the start that his job was to support the other two cars — lost theirs on the opening leg, taking a four-hour penalty on top of maximum time, and recovered only as far as 27th.
Five Japanese crews in the provisional top ten
The broader story sits behind the winner. Five of the top ten finishers were Japanese driver and co-driver pairings, and not all of them were in factory-backed machinery.
| Pos | Crew | Car | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Katsuhiko Taguchi / Takahiro Yasui (Team Mitsubishi Ralliart) | Mitsubishi Triton | 12:58:20 |
| 2 | Mana Pornsiricherd / Kittisak Klinchan (Toyota Gazoo Racing Thailand) | Toyota Hilux Travo | 13:00:45 |
| 3 | Ditsapong Maneein / Atikij Srimongkhol (Isuzu Suphan Trane Titanium Yokohama Nexzter) | Isuzu D-Max | 13:08:22 |
| 4 | Takuma Kamada / Naoyuki Yanagawa (Team TEIN) | Toyota Hilux GR Sport | 13:13:10 |
| 5 | Bailey Cole / Sinnopong Tairat (Feeliq Innovation Motorsport) | Ford Raptor | 13:55:06 |
| 6 | Masanao Nitta / Hirokazu Somemiya (Tras POWER135 TRD Hilux) | Toyota Hilux | 14:08:30 |
| 7 | Michael Freeman / Chaiya Chommalee (Feeliq Innovation Motorsport) | Ford Raptor | 14:08:35 |
| 8 | Akira Bamba / Megumi Fujita (Cusco Racing) | Mitsubishi Triton | 14:26:06 |
| 9 | Tomohiro Wada / Keitaro Ikami (Showa Garage Racing × Toyo Tires) | Suzuki Jimny Sierra | 14:38:12 |
| 10 | Takuma Aoki / Ittipon Simaraks / Songwut Danphiphattrakoon (Geolandar Fortuner takuma-gp) | Toyota Fortuner | 14:48:48 |
Takuma Kamada took fourth in a Toyota Hilux GR Sport on what the organizer describes as his first cross-country rally, finishing 4 minutes 48 seconds behind the final podium place. Masanao Nitta and Hirokazu Somemiya were sixth in a team the organizer's own reports classify as a private entry, in a field otherwise thick with works and semi-works trucks — on a week when several higher-profile crews lost between seven and fifteen minutes to navigation errors in the forest sections.
And ninth overall went to a Suzuki Jimny Sierra. Tomohiro Wada and Keitaro Ikami ran the 1.5-liter widebody version of the kei-class Jimny in the T1G class and finished ahead of dozens of pickup-based entries over 2,000 km of Thai gravel, forest and mud. If you want one line that explains the Jimny's reputation outside Japan, that is probably it.
The Thai-built Triton is also sold in Japan
Worth flagging for readers outside Japan: the winning car is a heavily modified FIA Group T1 machine — T1D class in the official results — based on the production Triton, which is built in Thailand for markets that buy mid-size pickups. That makes it an awkward fit for the usual definition of a JDM car.
It is not a stranger to Japan, though. Mitsubishi put the current-generation Triton back on sale in the Japanese market in February 2024 after a 12-year absence, so the rally truck does connect to a model a Japanese buyer can order.
The Ralliart name is the other reason this matters. It is Mitsubishi's motorsport brand, tied for decades to the Lancer Evolution rally program, dormant for roughly ten years and revived in 2021. The team itself is operated by Thailand-based Tant Sport with technical support and vehicle development from Mitsubishi Motors engineers, under team director Hiroshi Masuoka — twice a Dakar winner. Three AXCR overall wins in five years is the clearest evidence yet that the revival amounts to more than a badge on an accessories catalog.