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Mäkinen denies move rumours

Tommi Mäkinen has dismissed media reports that he will move the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRC team from its current home in finland to a new one in Estonia.

This week, Finland's Ilta-Sanomat newspaper reported that the team was set to leave its base in Mäkinen's home town of Puuppola, four hours north of Helsinki, for a new home across the Baltic Sea in Estonia.

But today in Germany, as the Toyota squad made final preparations before ADAC Rally Deutschland, Mäkinen explained that while some parts of the operation would move to Estonia, the team base would remain in Finland.

"The story was not very true, our team is okay where it is - and will be where it is," he told wrc.com

"[But] because we have quite a lot more in the overall operation - hospitality units and trucks and recce cars and things - we will just split this equipment, that's the plan."

Moving some service park-related elements of Toyota's WRC team to Estonia would put them closer to the bulk of European WRC rounds.

Mäkinen acknowledged that the location of the team's current base did have drawbacks, but he also believed it had given them an edge.

"It does have some disadvantages logistics wise, but we have seen in Finland we have [achieved] very, very excellent performance, and I think one of the secrets is our home territory," he said.

"We could do quite a lot of preparations [there] for our home rally, as well as the Swedish rally. But of course our target is to improve our car. We are at the very beginning of our career, we still have quite a lot to do and our target is to be fast all over - not just at home."

Zdroj: wrc.com