DAVID EVANS
“Is this the end for Sebastien Ogier? Probably not...”
I
s Sebastien Ogier in crisis? He hasn’t been on the podium since early April; this is the first time he’s been off the podium on consecutive rallies since mid-2016 and he hasn’t been this far behind in the chase for the championship since 2012, when he was driving a Skoda Fabia S2000.
What’s going on? Is this the end for the Frenchman? Do we dare think of the championship being won by somebody not called Sebastien for the first time since a chap called Petter won it 15 years ago? Possibly. But probably not. Argentina first: Ogier’s not a fan of that rally. More precisely, he’s not a fan of the rutted conditions which can prevail down those fast South American stages. If the five-time champion has a weak spot, that’s it.
Portugal? A very simple mistake from Ogier. He cut a corner he’d told himself not to cut a few days earlier on the recce, broke the steering, failed to make the next left-hander and slipped off on the outside. It really wasn’t anything more dramatic than that. Some made much out of his apparent lack of speed and scorching stage times over the weekend. He might not have managed scratch after scratch, but he was still quickest across the spread of Saturday afternoon.
And then we come to the powerstage, the place where Ogier was supposed to knock everybody out and pull the high five out of the bag. Instead, he came away with nothing. And left Portugal 19 points behind Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville.
That powerstage performance was the one which got people really scratching their heads. How could that have happened? If you look a little closer, you’ll see that Seb sent the world a message on the first run through Fafe. Running ninth on the road, he was fastest. A few hours later, with the order tinkered with for live television, he found himself second down the same stretch of road. Time-wise, he was two seconds faster in the afternoon than he had been in the morning. Compare that with powerstage winner Esapekka Lappi, who whipped 11s out of his first attempt.
Running on a dirty road, Ogier was powerless to do more in the powerstage. Superficially, it looked bad. Superficially. I remember a similar story a few years ago with the other Seb. It was 2009 and Loeb arrived in Poland on the back of one of his biggest ever crashes in the WRC, on the Acropolis. He clipped a tree root or something similar in Mikolajki and finished seventh. The first five rallies had netted him five wins and a 20-point lead in the championship (and, don’t forget, this is in old money when a win was worth 10 not 25 points), but after round eight Loeb was a point behind Mikko Hirvonen.
Incredible. Game on. Cue predictions aplenty about France’s then five-time champion losing it. What happened? Well, to give Hirvonen his due, he extended his lead at home in Finland and moved further ahead after Loeb’s Citroen was penalised by a minute after the C4 WRC’S anti-roll bars failed to conform with homologation papers.
What happened on the final two rounds? Loeb won both and took a sixth title by the smallest of margins. And that grip remained firm for a further three years.
Discount a French Seb at your peril. The fightback starts this week.
The Wales Rally GB National Rally route has been revealed with increased stage mileage, and a switch to a Friday and Saturday format for 2018.
The event ran on Saturday and Sunday last year, but the organisers have listened to competitors. Many entrants in 2017 didn’t finish the Sunday leg until the evening which didn’t giving them enough time to rest before returning to work, which was a concern.
In 2017, the overnight stop on Saturday was followed by just 15.07 competitive miles on Sunday, which competitors said was not worth the extra day and late finish.
With the majority of the mileage for this year’s event on Saturday now anyway, the route change was made easier for the organisers.
Last year competitors drove 59.86 stage miles, with that expected to rise to over 85 this year when the event returns on October 4-7.
“The popularity of the WRGB National Rally is a really important success story for this event,” said Wales Rally GB managing director Ben Taylor. “There are not many sports where amateurs can compete alongside their heroes and this is a brilliant opportunity for crews from all levels of the sport to tackle the stages of this amazing World Championship event.
“We have listened to the feedback from last year and moved the event to Friday-saturday, as competitors didn’t appreciate the overnight for little mileage on the Sunday.
“What we have delivered is some of the most iconic rally stages in Wales over two days of great fun and camaraderie, with its own high profile finish on Saturday evening in the Rally Village.”
Entries for the event open on August 15, with the entry fee priced at £900 plus VAT. An entry for the full three-day international will cost £2200 plus VAT, with mileage expected to be just under 200.