OGIER BACK ON GB DESPERATE TO STRIKE
M-sport champion wants to top rivals on welsh stages
Sebastien Ogier says he has to beat title rivals Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak to keep his hopes of a sixth straight World Rally Championship victory alive beyond this week’s Wales Rally GB.
For the first time since 2012, the Frenchman is not in the lead of the championship as the series moves into its final three rounds. Despite a 23-point gap to leader Neuville and 10-point deficit to Tanak, Ogier maintains the pressure is on them and not him.
He told MN: “I am aware it’s a very important event for me, but I don’t feel extra pressure. I believe the pressure is more on my contenders – they are fighting for their first championship and it’s never easy to lead or hold the lead.”
Ogier’s record on Deeside is superb, with four wins from the last five starts. Last season he won the title with third place in Wales despite being forced into roadside repairs after damaging the brakes on his factory Ford Fiesta WRC in the dark in Aberhirnant.
Ogier is well aware that his best chance of getting his title tilt firmly back on track is to take what would be a record-breaking fifth win in Wales. Right now he shares the status of being the most successful driver on Britain’s biggest rally with fellow legends Hannu Mikkola and Petter Solberg.
“If I want to keep my chance alive, I need to beat them this weekend,” Ogier said of Neuville and Tanak. “In Spain and Australia, anything can happen. But this is a rally I like. It’s a tricky rally with tricky conditions, but those conditions bring possibilities to use them. I know I need to work on myself and do even better in the last three races.”
Last year Ogier won a fifth title with just two wins – this year he’s already topped the podium three times, but finds himself third in the standings.
“We’re not missing the wins,” he said, “it’s the consistency and the podiums that we’ve been missing – there’s a couple of reasons for that. I think we have had some bad luck, to be honest. But that’s racing. I have done some mistakes, but I feel I paid a lot for these mistakes. Many times in my career I have had luck with me, but now I am missing some of that. But also I think you can make your own luck and I need to do that in the last three races.
“The championship is still possible. Of course, we are not in the best position at the moment, but with 90 points still available being 23 behind, it’s definitely not lost.”
Ogier had hoped for a revised engine specification aboard his Fiesta for this week’s Rally GB. While the new parts in the engine have been tested and demonstrated an increase in power, torque and efficiency, it remains to be seen whether the new hardware, which requires a homologation joker, will be fitted in time for this week’s penultimate European round of the world championship.