“People need to take notice of the WRC title scrap”

Lewis Hamilton starts the season superbly. Two events won out of the first three, he’s looking strong. But Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen are close behind. Vettel wins the third event of the year, while Verstappen makes some headway and wins the next two at two completely different venues, proving his car is better than perhaps people thought. His team’s working well and doing a better job of both upgrading and extracting the maximum from its package. Vettel adds to Hamilton’s woe by winning the next two and Hamilton is all at sea. Except he isn’t, because he’s only 22 points away from the lead of the championship.

All three cars are competitive in the hands of their respective drivers, Verstappen,

Vettel and Hamilton, all having pros and cons with their respective machines.

Furthermore, Vettel has to cope with fast but inconsistent team-mates, while Verstappen’s squad can’t decide who to have next to him in the second car, its boss notoriously tough on his talent. Hamilton is lacking a partner who can take points away from his rivals through inconsistency.

Now, read that again, but replace Vettel with Ott Tanak, Max Verstappen with Thierry Neuville and Sebastien Ogier plays Lewis Hamilton. While the analogy is not perfect, the point is, why aren’t more people talking about the epic WRC title race?

It has all the off-track excitement of Formula 1 in recent rounds. There has been Tommi Makinen dressing down Jari-matti Latvala and Kris Meeke for costing Toyota a podium and robbing their team-mate Tanak’s rivals of crucial points. Then there is Hyundai which – in a paradox not dissimilar to Red Bull – can’t seem to choose who to put in its car apart from its Verstappen-style star Neuville.

Ogier’s Citroen is clearly lacking in pace compared to his rivals, but he is also fighting with one-hand tied behind his back in a quest for a seventh title as he only has one-teammate to two for the others, Esapekka Lappi proving massively inconsistent before a return to form in his native Finland.

Then there’s the fact that Elfyn Evans – who, let’s not forget was the closest driver to the top three in the standings – has missed the last two rounds through injury and the reigning champion with Ogier, the M-sport Ford World Rally Team – is somewhat floundering despite doing a good job considering the circumstances.

All that equates to add something that, if this was F1, it would be the most exciting season in ages. Despite its off-track excitement, F1’s title was decided ages ago, with just under half the season to go. Tanak, Ogier and Neuville will almost undoubtedly fight this one out to the last round, just like last year. And, it’s about time more of the motorsport fraternity sat up and took notice of what is another vintage season of the WRC.

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