Rally Spain winner Sébastien Ogier is targeting a “similar” World Rally Championship program in 2023 to his six-round season in 2022.
Eight-time world champion Ogier had originally intended to scale back his rallying commitments in 2021 in order to focus more on home life and other projects outside the WRC, but stuck around for one more year due to the truncated nature of the COVID-19-affected 2020 campaign.
That meant 2022 was Ogier’s first as just a part-time driver, and he’s delivered strong results including second place on both the Monte Carlo Rally and Rally New Zealand as well as victory on last weekend’s Rally Spain.
Ogier is already known to be competing on at least next year’s Monte Carlo Rally, but when fielding a question about Rally Spain’s future Ogier told DirtFish “you will probably see me but not on full-time again and we haven’t decided exactly which rallies I am going to do next year”.
Pressed on if that meant he’ll do six rallies again in 2023 like he will this year, or if it’ll be more or less, Ogier said discussions are still ongoing but his program is likely to be very similar.
“It’s about the same,” he said. “The plan is about the same.
“Soon enough we’ll be able to communicate that with the team. There is still some discussion going on but at least I think there is a wish on both sides for a similar campaign as this year.”
Toyota team principal Jari-Matti Latvala has previously declared he would like to roll the same driver lineup into the 2023 season – which would likely mean Ogier sharing a GR Yaris Rally1 again with Lappi.
“Sébastien has an interest to drive some rallies next year, and Esapekka [Lappi] would also like to do rallies, so yeah, we have to get everything working out and we are working on that,” Latvala said.
“But as I mentioned, there are also some other drivers contacting us, but when we win all the titles with this driver lineup then I raise the question ‘is there any point to change the lineup?’.
“In my opinion no. But it’s not depending on me, so we have to discuss with the drivers.”
