Sébastien Ogier has advised Oliver Solberg to not want too much too soon after making another mistake at Rally Japan.
Solberg won last year’s Rally Estonia which, along with the WRC2 title in a GR Yaris Rally2, convinced Toyota to hand him a full Rally1 season in 2026.
He then immediately won the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally to lead the World Rally Championship for the first time in his career, but Solberg has claimed just one podium finish in the six subsequent events.
He’s made small mistakes at every single rally so far, including three day-ending crashes on the last three Tarmac rallies.
In Japan, Solberg was chasing eventual winner Elfyn Evans before he was caught out under braking for a tight left-hander and smacked the right-rear of his GR Yaris Rally1 against a pole.
At the end of that stage, team-mate Ogier said it was “a shame” that Solberg went off but “unfortunately not a surprise” and the two had a deep conversation back at the service park on Saturday afternoon.
Asked what his advice would be for Solberg, Ogier told DirtFish: “It’s a tough one. It’s difficult to give advice because we all are different.
“First of all, mistakes are part of the learning process. We’ve all been there. But for him at the moment, again, we repeat it a couple of times now, the speed is definitely not the question. He has shown great, great speed so far.
“But the only advice I would give him is, yeah, be careful that you don’t overdo it and at some point… there is also some stories with drivers who just burn their wings, wanting too much too early. So you have to be maybe a little bit careful with that, because other than that, he’s definitely there and has great potential. [There are] many, many years in front of him.
“Maybe right now, for sure, it’s easy to say ‘try to focus on that’, being a bit more consistent. Because after seven rounds, yeah seven times he has been very fast but every single rally there’s been some issues.
“So that’s why, let’s say, the most important is to have the speed. He has it, and that’s easier to find the consistency than to find the speed. So I will conclude on that positive point.”
Toyota technical director Tom Fowler agreed with Ogier.
“The speed that he [Solberg] has is incredibly useful to us,” Fowler told DirtFish. “So going forward, I think the important thing for him and the team is to work out a way how to harness that speed that he clearly has, but reducing the risk and therefore eliminating more of the mistakes.”
But what did Fowler make of Ogier’s immediate stage-end reaction, which many perceived as feisty?
“I think it’s Séb who’s in the best place to make this kind of judgment,” he explained. “I mean, we can make this judgment perhaps from an engineering perspective, using data, or from a management perspective, using the data and the feeling.
“But Séb Ogier knows how fast he’s going and if someone’s going faster, particularly on Tarmac, I’m sure he knows that’s probably a bit risky. So yeah, I think it was a very nice statement considering the environment that it was in. It was the end of the stage, he just found out the news but yet still it was said in quite an OK way.”
Ogier finished Japan as the runner-up, losing important ground on SS2 that he couldn't recover
Solberg eventually finished Rally Japan in 21st place, but with all 10 Super Sunday bonus points to his name, while Ogier came home second, 12.8s behind team-mate Evans. Sami Pajari and Takamoto Katsuta completed a Toyota top-four lockout.
“We can be very happy to bring another fantastic team result, 1-2-3-4, to everybody, but especially Morizo-san, our big boss, being there and cheering for us,” Ogier said.
“He’s the man who made all that happen at the beginning, so I think it’s the best, let’s say, reward we can give him here.
“On my side yeah of course I came here for the win so I cannot be 100% happy with the second place but it hasn’t been a bad weekend either. I fought hard all the way and even if I never really felt the way I would love to, I’ve never been really able to show my normal Tarmac speed, that’s the way it is sometimes.
“We still go home with some decent points, and that’s what we have to take.”
