A chaotic Secto Rally Finland turned the World Rally Championship title race on its head once again – to the point that current points leader Thierry Neuville now deems part-timer Sébastien Ogier to be his biggest title rival.
Neuville’s lead at the top of the standings has grown to 27 points thanks to both team-mate Ott Tänak and Toyota’s Elfyn Evans not scoring in Finland, which in turn helped promote Ogier to second in the championship standings.
Eight-time world champion Ogier had started the year on a part-time program but his involvement in Toyota’s championship efforts has ramped up of late. He accepted a request from Toyota to add Latvia to his schedule and activated an option in his 2024 contract to contest Finland, meaning he’s missed only three rounds out of nine this year – and one of those was through force majeure in Poland.
Ogier is now the closest driver to Neuville in the championship
Neuville already believes that his former title adversary is now the most likely driver to stop him from claiming a first drivers’ championship title, even if Toyota is yet to confirm he’ll contest all of the remaining rounds.
When asked by DirtFish if he considered Ogier his main challenger for the title, Neuville replied: “Yeah, maybe… probably yes. I mean, they are all three very hard to beat. They are all three very strong.”
Neuville went on to insinuate that Ogier’s approach had been a carefully calculated strategy, having spent previous rallies complaining that part-time drivers were dominating proceedings with their road order advantage.
“We have all run out of luck at some point during the season so far, and we have all had hard times cleaning the road, but Ogier has chosen his rallies well and taken profit of the regulations well. I think it’s a clever approach from his side.”
His Hyundai team-mate Tänak is now 31 points adrift of top spot and third in the title race, having rolled on Friday morning and then withdrawing entirely from the rally when his co-driver Martin Järveoja remained in hospital overnight as a precautionary measure.
Neuville hopes he can get some support from Tänak as the title race intensifies
On the possibility of receiving preferential treatment from Hyundai with his team-mates sacrificing themselves to aid his cause, Neuville said that he “felt the team was very supportive for the last two rallies already”.
There was a notable flare-up of intra-team relations between the pair at Acropolis Rally Greece in 2022, when Neuville was leading but Tänak was the driver still with hopes of winning the drivers’ championship that eventually went Kalle Rovanperä’s way.
Tänak was pushing to catch Neuville for victory but was eventually ordered to hold position – which he duly executed after a request from then-team president Sean Kim.
Asked whether he felt Tänak would support his title ambitions, Neuville responded: “Yeah, I mean, nothing is excluded.”
However, Neuville has yet to have any form of discussion with Tänak about the possibility of team orders late in the season.
“No, I think the first thing now is that everybody gets a break,” he said. “Take a rest, see where we can improve, especially for those rallies like we did here in Finland. It was the first rally this year where the pace wasn’t there. After the break, we come back and we’re going to see what the strategy will be.”
