Following in the footsteps of a legend is never an enviable task. Particularly when the man that legend steered to success after success is very exacting in his standards.
Benjamin Veillas knows. An accomplished co-driver in his own right, he just wasn’t quite right for Sébastien Ogier. Up stepped Vincent Landais.
Not just filling the void left by Julien Ingrassia, but establishing himself with his own methods and routines, the Frenchman is the newest World Rally champion as he steered Ogier to another world title two weeks ago.
But how has Landais managed to fill Ingrassia’s shoes?
“I sound like Julien,” Ingrassia says, “which is easy for me because it’s not something that I do on purpose, I do it automatically like this.
“I guess it comes from the fact that I’ve been watching onboards of them [Ingrassia and Ogier] since the beginning, and now I’m saying the same words as Julien. At the beginning it was quite funny to hear me because sometimes people don’t know if it’s me or Julien.”
But over the last three seasons, as his own confidence has grown, Landais has begun to add his own twist. “I still sound like Julien, but I feel also that I’m more doing myself my own style, I would say,” he explains. “So it’s kind of a mix of both of them or both of us.
“Julien was doing an incredible job, but I would like also to do a bit more my own style because I want also to be myself.”
What does that actually mean in practical terms?
“I would say that I tried to be more consistent with the order of the words,” Landais replies, “because sometimes with Julien they were putting the words in that order and the next corner the same words I would say were in different order which was not consistent for me. If you have an order for the words then you should have always the same.
“It means like two left, don’t, keep in and so on. That would have been sometime in a different order. And then I try to put all the time the same order. Then it’s quite easy for me also to say it like this and also easier for Séb to keep it in mind. So I try to be more consistent and more efficient on this.
“But obviously the bace was already very strong and I tried not to destroy everything, I just tried to do it my way and it looks like it’s working because Séb doesn’t say nothing. And when we make new notes I can see that sometimes he is using my order even. Like this new order or these new things that I have put so it means also that it’s a common sense I would say.”
Landais joins David Evans on SPIN, The Rally Pod to explain more about life as Ogier’s co-driver, what life is a world champion has been like, the positives and negatives for him with their current WRC program and the stressful tale behind his union with Ogier in late 2022.
