PIERRE BUDAR
What went wrong for Citroen this season?
“We have faced the situation where we had lost a lot of development at the beginning of the year. We have been rushed. It was difficult to recover the time we had [lost] at the beginning of the year because we had new drivers, new engineers and they had to understand the car. They had to learn how to work together and make development the priority. All of this needed time at the start of the season and, of course, this time give us some late advancement compared to the other teams and we have not been able to recover this.”
But you made good progress?
“I am quite sure we have made a lot of progress during the year and we had a lot of ongoing development that would have been ready for Monte Carlo, but this is the problem – from Seb’s point of view it would have been better to have it before and we can agree with this, but it cannot be possible. You cannot contract the time when you need to do some new development, some new tooling or new moulds, you cannot get the time back – especially with the homologation system, which is strict. With the homologation system you cannot make a mistake.”
When did you first realise Ogier was thinking about leaving?
“We had some first discussion with Seb after the summer. Of course, his concern was started after Germany.”
That was a difficult event, especially given his statements to the press at the time...
“Yes. I confirm.”
When did you find out Citroen would not continue into the WRC’S hybrid era in 2022?
“We had several scenarios pondering for a while and it has been decided to relaunch Peugeot in World Endurance Championship. We have already DS involved in Formula E and we couldn’t get a third programme and have a good level of performance with three main programmes from the same organisation. So, when the decision has been made for Peugeot somewhere [in PSA], the decision has been made for Citroen not to be involved in the hybrid WRC in 2022.”
Was there ever a chance, in your opinion, Peugeot, for example, could r un in WRC instead of WEC?
“[That] could have been a scenario also. But it has been decided to go for WEC because this programme was more online with expectation on Peugeot’s side. I don’t want to comment on this choice by Peugeot – I’m not in a position to do so.”