The same but totally different
Sebastien Ogier took his fifth consecutive crown in 2017, but this was a very different campaign from his years of Volkswagen domination
New motor. Different threads. Same story. Sebastien Ogier wins another World Rally Championship, and the high-five is done with one round to spare. Nothing had changed – but everything had changed around it.
Ogier, his co-driver Julien Ingrassia, and the whole M-sport World Rally Team did a quite brilliant job this year. The Cockermouth-developed, built and run Ford Fiesta WRC won more rallies, set more fastest times and led for longer than any of its rivals through 2017.
Watching the team celebrating, fittingly, at its home round of the world championship, it was impossible not to notice the look of slight bewilderment being passed around along with the bottles of champagne. ‘How the hell did we do that?’ pondered the collective voice. It’s a fair question.
Rewind nine months and 12 rallies. Casino Square, Monte Carlo. M-sport team principal Malcolm Wilson leans back in his seat in the Cafe de Paris and momentarily shuts his eyes. A second later, they’re open again and he’s smiling. Really smiling.
“What a year we’re in for, eh?” he says. Having spent much of the previous three hours being asked the same question a hundred different ways, he admits for the 101st time that Ogier can end M-sport’s drivers’-title drought.
‘Drought’ is actually slightly misleading. Drought would intimate that this was a dry spell between showers. It’s like saying the Atacama Desert suffers from a drought; drivers’ titles at Dovenby have been as common as kagools in Chile’s drier bits.
Of course Ogier could win the title. He’s Sebastien Ogier. The bigger question that January afternoon was M-sport’s chances in the makes’ race. Could Wilson’s team pick up its first world title in 10 years?
Wilson thought about his answer. Then thought some more. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I probably wouldn’t want quoting, but it’s going to be hard for us. Look at what we’re up against: Citroen’s coming back after a year of testing and Hyundai’s looking very strong. As for Toyota, who knows?
“No, this year’s about a drivers’ title. I genuinely think we have a shot at that with Seb, but I think we’ll struggle in the manufacturers’.”
Worrying about spilling that particular off-the-record chat seems a bit superfluous now. Ahead of the Monte Carlo Rally, nobody had much of a clue what to expect. The new year brought rallying’s most exciting new cars in a generation, complete with plenty more power, torque and talk. Active transmission was back, and downforce was up and having a bigger impact on corner speeds than at any time since Group B more than three decades earlier.
The one given was Ogier’s potential. The Frenchman’s speed and ability had guided him to the previous four world titles. There were plenty who pointed to Volkswagen’s vast resources and sublime Polo R WRC; winning had been less complicated for Ogier when he’d been employed out of Hanover.
Prior to Volkswagen, Ogier had enjoyed – then endured – his time at Citroen. A time when Citroen was still spending in the fashion expected of a factory team. Driving for a private outfit hadn’t been on Ogier’s radar – until Volkswagen’s diesel-emissions scandal broke. That, plus the lack of any offer from Citroen or Hyundai, and a reluctance to get back aboard a Toyota Yaris WRC anytime soon after a particularly wayward test, forced the WRC’S very own garagistes onto that radar.
Impressed with the car on his first run at a test in Wales, he and Wilson shook hands on a one-year deal. It was a deal
that cost M-sport millions; Red Bull and Ford both enjoy significant – and entirely disproportionate – space on the flanks of the Chris Williams-penned Fiesta WRC.
As you’d expect from a team with everything pared back to pay for car and driver, niceties were dispensed with. The creature comforts Ogier found on the team-only mezzanine level of Volkswagen’s hospitality unit had largely gone. He and his team-mates Elfyn Evans and Ott Tanak would share a crew room with M-sport’s customers. The sight of up-and-comers Osian
Pryce and Gus Greensmith tucking into an omelette at the table next to Ogier and Ingrassia took a bit of getting used to for all involved.
Such things were, however, on the periphery. Ogier maintained that his priority was the car and what could be done with it; money wasn’t important only in that he wasn’t expecting a pay rise (even if he was getting his M-sport salary on top of a chunk of cash from Volkswagen following the early termination of his contract).
Fundamentally, M-sport built a fast car. Of equal importance, it built a strong one that didn’t suffer too many troubles. Ogier’s round-one win in Monte Carlo confirmed that. And raised expectations. It would, after all, be business as usual for the #1 crew.
Fast forward nine months and, yes, the outcome was the same: an Ogier title with a round to spare. But after celebrating his first-round success, he would have to wait until round six before he topped the podium for the second time. And after that? Well, after that there were no more wins.
Preceding seasons with Volkswagen had him registering six, eight, eight and nine wins. If you’d told the champ he wouldn’t win again once he departed Rally Portugal, it’s fair to say he might have doubted even his own ability to take another title. Two things worked in his favour: his own consistency and the division of success.
That consistency was the real foundation of Ogier’s fifth title. Here are some questions and answers for you. Which M-sport driver won the most stages this season? Tanak.
Second? Evans. Which of the Fiesta men led for longest? Same. Tanak then Evans. Those are the facts. Now the figures. Stage wins: Tanak, 30;
Evans, 27; Ogier, 22. Stages completed as leader: Tanak, 40; Evans, 37; Ogier, 14.
But nobody scored as many podiums as Ogier in 2017 (nine from 13); he finished in the top five on every rally apart from Finland, where he retired after his only crash of the season (apart from the one he suffered testing in preparation for the event). Everybody knows that Ogier’s quick, but what we also saw this year was just how clever he is. The new rules were always going to shuffle the pack in terms of who had the racier cars, and he knew his days of nine wins and another crown were done. This year was about podiums and points. He and Ingrassia kept their score topped up better than anybody else.
This was Ogier’s street-fighting year. The gloves came off and the result remained the same. He will probably look back on this title with almost as much pleasure as the first one. Regardless of what was going on around him, Ogier showed his class this season.
That said, there’s a school of thought that says Ogier didn’t win this year’s championship – Thierry Neuville lost it.
Talking after ending his season with a fourth win, the Belgian came up with the line that he wasn’t a world champion, but he drove like a world champion. But a world champion doesn’t hit a bridge in Monte Carlo. Or break his suspension on a Swedish superspecial. A world champion would have converted their German pace into a big score, not a
“This year was about podiums and points. Ogier kept his score topped up better than anybody”
no-score. Most importantly, a world champion would have smashed the ball into the back of the net when confronted with an open goal in Finland. Neuville? He stuck it in row Z. Miles away.
The Neuville-hyundai package was comfortably the quickest this season. Most fastest times? Neuville, 56. Most stages as leader? Neuville, 50. There can be little doubt that he will top the table soon enough, quite possibly next year. He’s brave, overtly self-confident and eye-wateringly quick. But you need more than that to wear the crown. You need nous, guile and gumption. You need to know when it’s not your day and when enough’s enough. Once Neuville’s got all that covered, he won’t just drive like a world champion – he’ll be one.
Coming into the season, Hyundai was the team that carried over most of its 2016 World Rally Car. In theory, that should have given it the edge in terms of reliability. It didn’t. Neuville and his team-mates Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo suffered a number of issues in what looked to be the year’s most-fragile car. It was fragile but fast, and only fast for some. While Neuville hit the ground running and found complete comfort