Arai now has a huge 24-point lead over his nearest rival, Mark Higgins following his victory in New Zealand back in August, the last round in the PWRC.
Higgins though will be determined to make the local star work for it, especially as he has two rounds in hand over the Japanese driver, who opted not to nominate Ireland and GB as one of his six points' scoring events.
“We have not given up on taking the title in the PWRC,” Higgins told
Crash.net Radio last month. “We have got to see what happens in Japan though. If Toshi has a strong result there the championship is pretty much over, even if we won the last three.
“GB is however hopefully going to be quite a strong event for me and so is Rally Ireland. We have got our two strongest events to come at the end of the season but it will be very disappointing if we go to them knowing that we cannot win the championship – especially as it would have been perfect to take a World Rally Car to Ireland. That would have been great fun.”
Of the rest, Fumio Nutahara, Juho Haninnen, Araujo Armindo, Martin Rauam, Patrik Flodin and Gabriel Pozzo should all be strong contenders.
Indeed Nutahara took the PWRC win in Japan in 2006, 27.4 seconds up on Pozzo: "The last edition of the rally was very exciting for me, a very good result. This year, though, it could be tougher,” noted Fumio.
“The weather could be different to the sunshine we have enjoyed on this rally before. I will drive hard to try to repeat last year in my Mitsubishi."
In total, 16 drivers' will be able to score PWRC points in Japan.
PWRC regulars such as Stuart Jones, #32, Loris Baldacci, #33, Nasser Al-Attiyah, #39, Fabio Firsiero, #44 and Stepan Vojtech, #49 will skip this event as it is not one of their six nominated rounds.
Other significant entries:
Around 86 crews are due to start.
All the manufacturer teams will attend the Rally Japan and they will make up all of the entrants in World Rally Cars - with just 13 set to start.
