“The plan is to do that,” Kovalainen told DirtFish when asked if WRC2 Japan was in his plans.

“That’s a big motivation to do all these events beforehand, to get mileage in the car. It would be really interesting to do a bigger and longer event, probably some bigger roads.”

Central Rally, an event traversing the Aichi and Gift prefectures of Japan, will make up the backbone of the itinerary featured in Japan’s WRC round.

While Kovalainen’s experience in a four-wheel-drive rally car is limited to his two events in Japan so far this year, plus an outing on the snowy Arctic Rally in 2015, it is expected that the former McLaren F1 driver will have some familiarity with the roads likely to feature in the itinerary.

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