When are we going to listen to Sébastien Ogier? When? When are we going to understand that nine doesn’t always have to follow eight?
He couldn’t have been clearer on this. Yes, he’s leading the championship and yes, he’s likely to be in the best possible place on the road to further that advantage at the top of the table in Croatia later this month. But none of that means a thing.
When the rest of the drivers are landing into Porto and winding themselves up for round five, it’ll be family time for Ogier. And he couldn’t be happier.
And it’s not just titles that provoke a degree of ambivalence from Ogier, it’s rallying’s numbers in general.
Take his record-breaking seventh success at last month’s Rally México for example. He was delighted to be the driver who’d pulled on more pairs of winner’s boots than anybody else, but the satisfaction came from the drive and the delivery.
For large parts of his career, Ogier was hindered by running first on the road in Guanajuato. Remember 2015? That was the year when the FIA decided to make him run first on the road on days one and two. From memory, the regulation wording was centered on the ‘championship leader’ but back in the mid-teens, that meant only one man: Ogier.
And the FIA couldn’t have been clearer, this policy was designed to jam a stick in the spokes of the flying Frenchman, although there was potential fringe benefit that it could also derail the Volkswagen steamroller which had swept all before it for the previous two seasons.
What happened? An enraged Ogier rose to the task and delivered one of the drives of his career to win México eight years ago, against all the odds and one governing body.
When he retired from full time competition at the end of 2021, Ogier talked of a desire to land back into León with the opportunity of enjoying a slightly more swept road. He wanted to taste, to feel and to find what his rivals had enjoyed for season-after-season.
He wanted to demonstrate the Sunday benefit from a cleaner Friday. He did just that.
I remember being in the company of Ogier and his then team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala a few years ago. We were away from the heat of competition and relaxing with a cup of coffee. J-ML was walking me through the specification of his Audi quattro.
Typically, he moved into the numbers Hannu Mikkola and Michèle Mouton achieved behind the wheel of an A1. Ogier couldn’t add much. He sat and stared. And smiled.
On rallying’s history, the two couldn’t sit further apart. Latvala lives and breathes it without question. Ogier prefers some context around the numbers.
Seven wins in México, for example, was nice. But what did it really mean?
He considered DirtFish’s question.
“You know,” he said, “this kind of record, it has to be taken with perspective. I like to compare what is comparable in life. But here I don’t know how many starts I have compared to, I don’t know, talk about [rally] legends from the Nineties, when there was no Rally México.
“So what does it mean?
“That’s why maybe the Monte – and again I come to this rally – it’s one that has always been there. And that one is a monument of our sport, everyone has done it, it’s a bit more comparable still.
“I like to be the best of my time. But being the best compared to all time is for me, always, subjective.”
He’s absolutely right. The best of all time have been to the Monte, but only the best of the best from the last two decades have tried their hand in México.
Ogier’s stance on this has never changed. I remember him testing a quattro for the first time, he was interested, engaged and typically polite and complimentary.
But he wasn’t chasing the chassis number and he wasn’t blown away by the occasion.
For a while, that bugged me. How was it possible that this titan of our sport didn’t fully understand and appreciate the hands through which that same silverware had previously passed.
How could he not appreciate the brilliance of a driver like Walter Röhrl or Juha Kankkunen?
Quite how wrong I was and how much I’d misinterpreted his preference for the here and now over the Eighties and Nineties was brought into sharp focus when I saw him with the German maestro and the Finnish legend.
He was humility personified. He sat in genuine raptures as both imparted Group B tales of daring do. This is because Ogier is, first and foremost, a thoroughly bloody good bloke. A consideration only emphasized by his desire for family time or further fame and fortune.
Just because the numbers don’t stack up for Ogier, it doesn’t make him any less of a champion. What counts for him is his appreciation of the people and the potential for doing what he does best: driving fast.
History’s not everybody’s favorite subject. Current affairs are a winner every time.
