WRC SEASON REVIEW
Ford World Rally Team driver. Ogier’s trip home from Turkey was a quiet one. The day prior to his departure he’d experienced every emotion imaginable. Saturday’s opener had done for championship leader Neuville, leaving Ogier out front. Could he stay the
Thierry Neuville could have. Ott Tanak should have. Sebastien Ogier did. In terms of vintage, this year’s World Rally Championship was right up there with the bottle of Chateau Petrus the Frenchman shared with Malcolm Wilson to celebrate it.
That the cork came so close to remaining in the merlot only served to further improve the taste.
With three of the season’s 13 rallies remaining, Ogier was the outsider. Sitting in third place, 23 points down on Neuville after Rally Turkey in September, a comeback from here was hard to picture. Even for the M-sport was close to tears. Listening to him relay the effort, the agony and ultimately the ecstasy at getting his car working, his voice wobbled. He took a moment. Bowed his head slightly, composed himself. Then crashed on the next stage.
Turkey’s return to the world championship was always going to be a contentious issue for entirely separate political reasons.
No matter what your views on Recep Tayyip Erdogan were, the roads over which he presides played host to the season’s most dramatic scenes.
Tanak denied
Plenty saw Turkey as the turning point. It was, apparently, where Neuville and Ogier lost the championship. And Tanak emerged as the man to beat. Sure, he headed to the next round in Wales 13 points down on Neuville, but he landed on Deeside with the sort of momentum only a Finland-germany-turkey hat-trick can generate.
And Friday’s north Wales stages only served to further that theory. The Estonian demolished everybody and had the rally won before the weekend had begun. Cruising and controlling Saturday, the fragile front end of his Toyota Yaris WRC let him down again and he was forced to stop with radiator damage. Sweet Lamb left a bitter taste.
But he wasn’t done yet. One rally on and he was bossing a Spanish Friday in the same fashion. This time it was a puncture that halted his charge.
His journey from hero to zero was completed when he crashed out of the
lead fight in the Australian finale. By then, however, his hopes and dreams of a maiden title were well and truly out of his hands.
Tanak’s start was one of the surprises of the season. Nobody doubted his pace, but 2018 was his first year aboard a Yaris WRC, having driven Cumbrian-built Fiestas for six of the previous seven seasons. Tanak was as surprised as anybody, evidenced by him rating his debut podium in Monte Carlo as a personal highlight from a year of exceptional wins and towering speed.
And that speed has been placed beyond question with the season’s big numbers: stage wins? Tanak: 70 from this 250, 30 more than anybody else. And he led for 86 of those 250. That’s 21 more than his nearest rival.
Second place on a particularly tricky and changeable Monte in January was a solid indication that Tanak had located a sweet spot with the Yaris, but it was round five in Argentina in April where he sank squarely into the middle of it.
A silly spin in the first stage proper, dropped Tanak to the wrong end of the top 10 and cost him 23 seconds to the leader. Fired up and frustrated, the #8 Toyota was taken by the scruff of its neck and driven harder and faster than ever. Four stages later, he was in the lead. A lead he never let slip.
So much was expected from the next two rounds in Portugal and Sardinia, but a rock and a heavy landing cost him those results. In Toyota’s defence, the rock on the line in Portugal was virtually footballsized, but Tanak slotted it mid-ships where the underbody protection is at its strongest. But still the oil exited.
Three Fridays later and the Yaris nosedived flat-in-top into the Monte Baranta stage. Immediately, Tanak looked down at the dash, waiting for the warning light. It came. He stopped.
But the heart-breaker was Wales. That was the one he really deserved. Braking for a medium-speed lefthander, the front of the car took another engine-damaging impact, but this one really wasn’t Tanak’s fault. In Portugal, Ott slammed the bonnet down in frustration. In Italy, co-driver Martin Jarveoja flung his pacenote book at the dash. In Wales, Tanak lay down on the ground and shut his eyes, pondering a massive, massive missed opportunity.
The comfort for Tanak is what lies ahead. It’s fair to say the transition into Toyota wasn’t all plain sailing and there was the need for adjustment from both sides as they became acquainted. Mid-season, there was more talk of trouble on the horizon in the Puuppola base, but once again team principal Tommi Makinen has steered the ship to calmer waters and Ott ended the year a happier man. If Toyota can deliver in terms of transmission development (Tanak’s sure there’s more grip, feel and stability to come from the car) and front-end reliability, then he’ll start next season in a very strong position.
And not just him. Jari-matti Latvala suffered similar issues, but with his job on the line, the Finn kept his counsel and refused to be drawn on internal matters. Instead, Latvala focused his energies on what he could control and was simply superb – arguably better than ever – in the second half of the year. Second in Turkey, he was pipped to the win by Ogier in Wales, then lost a possible Spanish success with a puncture before topping the podium in Australia.
Latvala looked a more complete driver than ever as this year drew to a close. A potential title tilt next season might have looked fanciful with team-mates as strong as Tanak and the inbound Kris Meeke, but if J-ML can stretch that autumn form into a full season, 2019 could just deliver his dream.
Citroen not Meeke
Having mentioned Meeke, now’s as good a time as any to discuss what turned out to be a dramatically shorter year than the Northern Irishman expected. The first two rounds weren’t dramatically different to 12 months earlier, with Meeke finding nothing like the confidence needed to push for a win in Monte or Sweden. By round three in Mexico things were looking up, then a rare error from co-driver Paul Nagle cost them a podium in Corsica in April; stopping to change a puncture had the same effect on their Argentina result. And then came Portugal in May. A couple of deflations at the end of Friday forced the Citroen crew to run a tyre-less rim on the Porto street stage, where television pictures depicted sparks flying and high drama. The reality was a sensible strategy that kept them in the event.
Seeing the C3 WRC through the Porto streets reminded folk – this time quite unfairly – of Meeke’s reckless streak. At this point, the Dungannon driver hadn’t made a significant mistake since that Thursday night on Rally Germany the previous summer.
On day two in Portugal, Meeke turned into an Amarante left-hander fractionally too late and the C3 was sent to the trees. When the dust settled, the car looked horrific. Meeke and Nagle rightly pointed to the Citroen’s safety features doing their job in keeping the crew safe. But Citroen went down the road of what-ifs, put together a damning communication and sacked the pair of them.
Mads Ostberg stepped in and made the most of a heavily revised Citroen with a great second place in Finland and Craig Breen constantly looked for ways to build on a brilliant second in Sweden. But neither could make their season stick, with Breen enduring a genuinely luckless year.
Staring down the barrel of what would be only Citroen’s second winless season since 2002, the old boy came back and delivered for them. On the third event in his threerally programme, Sebastien Loeb wound back the years to clinch a Rally Spain victory that provided yet another fanciful storyline in this most compelling of seasons.
Hyundai’s rollercoaster
Coming into the second season with these latest generation World Rally Cars, Hyundai hogged the headlines. Firstly, could Neuville finish the job he’d started in 2017 and secondly, how quickly could the Korean manufacturer tie-up the makes’ title?
Andreas Mikkelsen joined Hyundai at the end of 2017 and, showing immediate pace, came close to winning in Australia. The world waited as famously good mates Neuville and Mikkelsen went headto-head in a straight race to the title. And that story would have been fascinating, had the Norwegian turned up; it’s rare to see a driver fall so far from grace in a single season. Yes, there were flashes of inspiration and speed, but that’s all they were.
Struggling to get the car to suit him, he tweaked his driving style to suit the i20 Coupe WRC, but once a driver turns their back on what comes naturally to them, they’re on a hiding to nothing. That’s precisely what Mikkelsen was on all season.
Conversely, Hyundai’s part-timers Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo did the job they were asked to do. And spent much of the year making up for Mikkelsen’s shortcomings. It’s telling to see that Paddon, with six fewer starts than Andreas, finished just 11 points behind him – and outscored him on four of his seven starts. Sordo, who was one place behind the Kiwi in the end of season standings, beat Mikkelsen to the finish five times.
All too often, the heavy lifting was left to Neuville. Toyota didn’t win this year’s manufacturers’ title, Hyundai lost it.
And that’s absolutely not meant to take anything away from Makinen’s men. They did a quite magnificent job in the mid-season development of the Yaris and the four-time champ and his sporting director Kaj Lindstrom should take plenty of credit in reigniting Latvala’s fire. Unfortunately, those changes came too late for Esapekka Lappi, who’d seen enough by Finland and was already looking to learn French for an end-of-season move to Citroen.
Ogier on top
Lappi’s new team-mate will, of course, be Ogier who takes his number ones from the side of the Fiesta and puts them on a C3 next season. Ogier will be badly missed by M-sport in 2019. And he’ll miss the Brits as well.
We’ve seen a different side to Ogier this year. After five years of dominance, he’s been in a dogfight through 2018. That he’s come out with the same result since ’13, is testament to Ogier’s ability, resolve, talent and temperament.
There have been times of sheer brilliance from Ogier this year. Aside from winning three of the first four rallies, stage six in Sardinia (fastest in thick fog and pouring rain) and that final run through Gwydir on the final morning in Wales kind will live long in the memory.
But what of Neuville? Can he bounce back from dropping a 27-point lead going into the second half of this season? Looking at his results following a quite brilliant final-stage win in Sardinia, you’d have to question that. He managed just one podium (second in Germany) through the season’s second half and rarely looked like the driver who’d taken a rare non-scandinavian win in Sweden at the top of the year.
Neuville has little interest in such considerations. Anybody who knows the Belgian knows confidence and self-belief is no problem for him. He passes the point up the line and talks of Hyundai’s need to keep pace with Toyota.
But at the back of his mind – and that of Ogier, no doubt – there will remain a single figure; one man ready to ruin everybody’s 2019 plans. Ott Tanak won’t be far from anybody’s thoughts as Monte Carlo moves ever closer. ■