Despite overhauling Mārtiņš Sesks for second place on Rally Latvia, Sébastien Ogier has labeled his Saturday performance as not good enough – revealing he also had a bad sleep last night through sickness which has left him low on energy.
The Toyota driver started Saturday’s opening loop of four stages 5.9 seconds in arrears of Sesks, with a clear target of passing him given road position between the pair would be closer.
Although Sesks did beat Ogier on one stage, the eight-time World Rally champion has successfully completed the mission, moving 0.6s ahead by the time crews reached mid-day service in Liepāja.
There was a scare towards the end of the morning’s penultimate stage where Ogier ran wide and dipped into a ditch, which he estimates cost him three seconds, but otherwise – based on the times at least – it looked like a good morning for Ogier.
But he doesn’t see it that way at all.
Though he gained second place on Saturday morning, Ogier was also 13.2s slower than team-mate Rovanperä across the four-stage loop
“Yeah, [I’m] not happy, not at my best,” Ogier told DitFish.
“I’m never happy when I don’t deliver a good performance and this morning, it was not enough. I didn’t push hard enough early on when it was good grip, maybe better than I expected, with now a better start position, and I didn’t use it enough.
“After that, I pushed a bit harder, but I made a couple of mistakes. One in the ditch, which could have ended badly and cost us three seconds this time. But yeah, all in all, I cannot be satisfied with this loop, for sure.
“The only positive is that we are still in the fight for the target of second place. Anyway, Kalle was already gone yesterday and he didn’t back off this morning and is still on another level.
“So for sure, he’s out of reach since long, but even for second place, I think we have enough of a fight right now, because we are more or less equal with Martins now, and Ott has came back also into the mix not far behind, so for sure we’ll have to do a better job.”
Asked what specifically he felt didn’t go his way, Ogier explained he was a little sick during the night which left him low on energy this morning.
“If I’m honest, I slept pretty bad this night,” he said. “I was a little bit sick and I had low energy, but it’s no excuse.
“It’s nothing too bad but I didn’t sleep well and yeah I feel a bit empty this morning, you know this kind of low energy and luckily we are not running a bicycle and we’re still sitting in a car!
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“But still we need some energy, it’s still a fight, you still need a lot of focus and I cannot say I wasn’t 100% this morning.
“I have to boost myself midday,” he added, “and try to find something but also we made some little change on the car to try to improve the chicanes. I was driving a lot in chicane and actually, it improved the chicane but probably lost elsewhere so we have to think if we find something a bit better for the afternoon now.
“I’ll have to, because there’s two guys just behind me who definitely don’t make my life easy!”
