The disgraceful precedent set by Ogier’s Acropolis fine

I am no free-speech warrior. I don’t buy into this nonsense that we should be free to say literally anything. Deliberately vile, racist, sexist, homophobic language being disseminated consequence-free has no place in the world of motorsport – or anywhere, for that matter.

But the suspended €30,000 fine handed out to Sébastien Ogier for daring to suggest the Acropolis Rally Greece organizers had not used their brains because they’d left an inadequate gap between cars to let dust settle was an abhorrent overreach of censorship. It set a dangerous precedent.

Even rival team principal Rich Millener was aghast, as he responded on social media to DirtFish’s initial reporting of the penalty. It was an especially strong statement considering the same story he’d highlighted mentioned his own team receiving a fine for an unrelated rules infringement.

“Genuinely no words about this decision,” he reacted. “Take that how you wish.”

Naturally, as a key stakeholder in the World Rally Championship, Millener needs to tread very carefully. Luckily, I don’t have quite the same constraints.

There is an edge of irony to breaking this one down. Ogier spoke with emotion at the stop line of SS1 when delivering the comments that dropped him in hot water. But the rule book cares not for emotion. It is a forum of facts and logic. So I’ll park my own fury and pick it apart accordingly.

Article 12.2.1.f of the FIA International Sporting Code has been enforced once before in the WRC, when Mads Østberg ran his mouth after picking up a puncture during stage 18 of Rally Italy Sardinia in 2021. That deflation cost him 22.6s to eventual WRC2 winner Jari Huttunen – he lost the rally win by 7.5s.

“I’m so f****** annoyed, all the things happening all the time,” Østberg said at the finish line, having screamed his head off in the cockpit and punched the steering wheel repeatedly immediately after crossing the flying finish.

“These f****** s*** tires, I touched absolutely nothing, straightaway I have a puncture. F****** hell, I’m so f****** tired.”

That cost him €1000 but, far more gallingly, a suspended 25-point deduction from his WRC2 points account.

This, by comparison, is what offended the stewards on Acropolis Rally Greece so profoundly when spoken by eight-time world champion Ogier: “It is annoying to see that the sport never learns. We ask, we know that we are going to have dust. There is hanging dust. Oh, they say no. What do you have in your head? Nothing. It’s crazy.”

There is no swearing. No tirade. A pointed comment, yes. But competing in one of the world’s most dangerous sports, with your visibility impaired beyond normal tolerances, is a situation that would put even the world’s most tolerant, skilled, patient athletes on edge.

Ogier’s first-stage comment about hanging dust is not even the most objectionable comment he made on this year’s Acropolis, never mind in his lifetime.

Suggesting that Thierry Neuville “cried all the time” about road sweeping was controversial and, more importantly, pre-meditated. He recited the same talking point to anyone that would listen on Friday afternoon. Having lost two minutes with a turbo failure, Ogier had lost the ability to beat Neuville with his car – so tried to get in Neuville’s head and throw him off. It didn’t work – and as he admitted after the rally on Instagram, karma got him back with his powerstage roll.

Those comments were made in a media zone after a road section. He’d had time to calm down and think. It was not a heat-of-the-moment reaction. But stage-end interviews are. You cannot self-censor when your brain is filled with adrenaline.

This stewards’ decision sets in my view a highly concerning precedent. Suppose drivers must worry about being fined ludicrous sums of money, or even lose championship points, because they opened their mouth at a stage end. In that case, stage-end interviews will simply disappear from the WRC. Why take this risk? Why say anything? The drivers will reveal nothing. Cars will roll up to stage end, the driver’s door will stay closed and we’ll only know what the cameras can show us. And the cameras don’t pick up everything. There are stories beyond the surface – and we won’t get to find them out if the drivers need to consider the truth might lead to both sporting and financial penalties.

A media-zone interview and a stage-end interview cannot be treated the same. They are two wildly different environments. Here’s the hard truth some may struggle to stomach: if you can’t understand that what drivers say while high on adrenaline at a stage end isn’t necessarily what they think and believe when given the benefit of breathing space, calm and perspective, you do not belong in the world of motorsport. Leave. This is not your domain. You do not understand.

One of the arguments posited by stewards is that Ogier’s influence as an eight-time world champion means he must be held to a certain standard, even in these stage-end interviews.

“Many people see famous athletes as an example and recent investigations have shown that there is a direct link between negative comments from drivers and increased hate directed towards officials,” read the statement from the officials.

This is an utterly ridiculous standard to hold drivers at stage ends to. Ogier is not responsible for the idiocy of online trolls who either lack the basic emotional intelligence to understand the difference between a heat-of-the-moment comment made while filled with adrenaline and a pre-mediated attempt to undermine someone, or simply pretend not to understand the difference so they can exploit it for ragebait.

I could talk about this all day. But I’m not going to. I’m going to defer to an expert. Someone who’s been in this situation before and knows all the nuances from experience. His name is Sebastian Vettel. He’s a four-time Formula 1 world champion.

Vettel won the 2018 Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Mercedes drivers Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton. Multiple world champion Hamilton, in the heat of the moment, called Max Verstappen a “dickhead” a couple of minutes after climbing out of his car at the finish, as he watched the replay of Verstappen’s Red Bull clattering into the world champion’s Mercedes exiting Turn 1 after attempting a clumsy overtake.

A reporter pulled Hamilton up on this comment in the post-race press conference. But before Hamilton could respond to the reporter’s question, Vettel interjected, requesting to answer the query himself – having not been present for the offending moment in question.

“It’s not fair,” remarked Vettel. “I don’t know what Lewis did but we’ve all been in that situation. We fight sometimes, we sometimes go wheel to wheel and it’s close. We have a lot of adrenaline going. Do you think compared to football, if you have a microphone on a football player’s mouth, that everything he says is something nice, and is a nice message when the guy tackles him, and sometimes maybe he fouls him or not? So I don’t think it’s justified to give us this kind of s*** questions and making up a story out of nothing if we are just racing and we’re full of adrenaline. Sometimes we say these things.

“If I hit you in your face, you’re not going to tell me: ‘Sebastian, that was not nice!’ It’s a human reaction. Sometimes I feel it’s all a bit blown up and artificial if we have these questions trying to make a story out of nothing.”

The stewards were right about one thing. They pointed out that Ogier’s comments being related to safety were an irrelevant deflection to the accusation. They were right. Because the topic was irrelevant, period.

My opinion on this does not matter. Unless you’re a high-profile motorsport athlete reading this, neither does yours. But Vettel’s does. Ogier has lived a similar reality to Vettel. He has thrown every ounce of energy, both physical and mental, at competing in a sport that could kill him, won multiple world championships while doing so, then been judged for his words either during or immediately after partaking in that activity.

If you think Ogier’s fine for speaking out of turn was justified, you are wrong. And you do not possess the expertise to prove otherwise. This position is not an opinion of my own – it is the opinion of one of the select few human beings on this earth who understands the fine balancing act that must be followed when critiquing this issue.

I hope Ogier does not change his behavior based on this penalty. And that “the FIA can enjoy the dinner” again, as Ogier quipped to DirtFish after his penalty for doing donuts for spectators during Rally Spain in an area that he honestly but erroneously believed had been opened up for exhibition driving.

Ogier’s fine on the Acropolis was a disgrace. I am outraged. You should be too. If it is allowed to continue, no driver will reveal the truth to any of us anymore. And that will be an incredibly sad day for rallying.