Julien Ingrassia temporarily steps out of retirement and into Sébastien Ogier’s Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 at this week’s Rally Finland.
Ogier’s regular co-driver, Vincent Landais, has decided to miss round 10 of the championship for personal reasons.
While the entire World Rally Championship service park wishes Landais the best, the return of Ingrassia is nevertheless is an exciting news story as he partners Ogier for the first time since 2021.
That makes Rally Finland Ingrassia’s first WRC event for almost five years, while it will also be the first time he’s co-driven in Rally1 machinery as well.
Quite the challenge – but he is an eight-time world champion. So if anyone can adapt to this task seamlessly, it’s going to be Ingrassia.
The Frenchman, however, is not the only WRC champion co-driver to come out of retirement as a one-off in the last decade.
Back in 2018, Ogier and Ingrassia’s M-Sport team-mate Elfyn Evans was in need of a stand-in co-driver for the Tour de Corse, after regular partner Dan Barritt required more time to recover from concussion after an accident in Mexico four weeks earlier.
Evans turned to 2003 world champion Phil Mills.
Mills, who spent most of his career alongside Peter Solberg, stepped back from the WRC midway through 2010, with Chris Patterson taking his seat alongside Solberg in a Citroën C4 WRC at the time.
While he did a few national events in the intervening years, by April 2018 Mills hadn’t co-driven in the WRC for eight years – and never in a car with as much horsepower or aerodynamic performance as that year’s Ford Fiesta WRC.
Entrusting Mills may have seemed a brave move from Evans considering his lack of recent experience, but the then 54-year-old had one very important bit of experience in the bank: he worked as Evans’ route note crew on rallies.
Mills made his first WRC start in eight years at the 2018 Tour de Corse
“It won’t be easy without Dan, but his fitness comes first and it’s important that he has the time to make a full recovery for the rest of the season,” said Evans at the time.
“Phil has stepped in, and certainly knows his stuff. Other than Dan, he knows my pacenotes better than anyone and he’s certainly no stranger when it comes to winning rallies.”
Much like Ingrassia – who steps back into his old life at one of the most demanding events on the calendar given its speed – Mills had a big challenge on his hands, with Corsica’s relentless roads earning it the ‘Rally of 10,000 Corners’ tag.
“It is the most technical round of the whole world championship, and I would have to get thrown into this one wouldn’t I?” Mills smiled.
“But yeah it is quite an eye opener with this new generation of cars. Fifty meters simply does not exist at all, you just flow straight into the next corner such is the acceleration, so it is quite an eye opener from that point of view.
“Otherwise, it’s pretty much business as it was 10 years ago. It’s quite nice, there’s a lot of faces around that you know, the systems are still the same, and there are still an extraordinary amount of pacenotes here it’s incredible.”
Mills guided Evans to fifth - his best result of the season at the time
The Welsh pairing settled into the event well after a difficult start to the 2018 season for Evans. While Ogier and Ingrassia stormed to victory, Evans and Mills were sensible and recorded a top-five finish – the best result of Evans’ season at that stage.
“Phil’s been incredible, this is one of the hardest rallies to do notes on. I can’t thank him enough,” he said.
Barritt was back in the car for the next event in Argentina, but he partnered Takamoto Katsuta for 2019 as Scott Martin left Craig Breen to join Evans.
Mills’ WRC story wasn’t completely over there either. Returning one year later alongside old driver Solberg, the pair won WRC2 at Rally GB and finished 10th overall in a Volkswagen Polo GTI R5.
That remains the last WRC start for both of them.
