Hyundai’s WRC program manager Christian Loriaux has labelled Toyota’s move to run Sébastien Ogier on all four remaining rounds of this year’s World Rally Championship as ‘desperate’.
The Frenchman’s Secto Rally Finland victory earlier this month moved him into second place in the drivers’ standings, with the eight-time champion admitting he would likely agree to Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala’s request for him to complete the season in an effort to bolster his employer’s chances of a successful defense of both WRC titles.
While Ogier trails Hyundai’s series leader Thierry Neuville by 27 points, he is nine ahead of fellow GR Yaris Rally1 driver Elfyn Evans in the race for the drivers’ crown. Toyota has won every drivers’ title since 2019 and every manufacturers’ championship since 2020.
Asked if Ogier’s presence on every round would worry him, Loriaux told DirtFish: “No, I can’t see any point worrying about things you can’t control. I can’t control whether Séb will do all the rallies or not.
Ogier is expected to see out the rest of 2024 - a move Hyundai's Loriaux thinks shows the pressure Toyota is under
“I do expect Séb to do all the rallies. If he went to a rally he doesn’t like [Finland], it clearly shows that Toyota are on the back foot, that they really are stressed and that the only way to get back at us is to bring all the Armada.
“In that sense, it’s very clear that the reaction is a reaction of people desperate and under pressure. So, it’s good: we pressurize them. For sure it’s not easy and I don’t want to sound big-headed, but it’s good for me to see them pressurized and that’s our job, to try to fight the opposition. But it’s not easy and if it was easy, everybody would do it. We’re fighting, we’re trying everything we can.”
Loriaux admitted the summer’s trio of fast gravel rallies in Poland, Latvia and Finland were the ones the Korean squad feared the most. Final day crashes for Kalle Rovanperä and Evans in Jyväskylä opened the door for Hyundai to unexpectedly outscore its rival by 19 points – despite Ogier winning the event.
Toyota trails Hyundai by 20 points ahead of next week’s Acropolis, a rally won by the Japanese manufacturer two out of three times since Greece’s return to the WRC calendar in 2021.
Loriaux concluded: “It’s still a very long championship and it’s open. I think everybody should be happy to see a tight championship like this.”
