The aim of any World Rally Championship driver’s career is simple: become World Rally champion.
Reaching that peak is done via a tricky ascent that requires unwavering dedication, boundless talent and often a little slice of fortune too. It’s said in life that the journey is often more enjoyable than the destination, but no journey worth its salt is complete without also reaching that destination.
The list of WRC nearly-men is a case in point. Jari-Matti Latvala desperately craved a world championship, as did compatriot Mikko Hirvonen. Markku Alén had one for all of 13 days before it was ripped from his grasp in the FIA courtroom. All would trade any of their rally wins for that elusive championship title.
Thierry Neuville is the latest driver making those final steps of the climb in search of his career peak. His dedication is beyond question; so too his driving skill. Fortune? Well that might be counting against him, as a driver not booked onto the course has wavered off path and ended up chasing him instead.
Ogier has inadvertently become a championship contender in 2024
Sébastien Ogier never wanted to climb the mountain again. He’s stood at the summit eight times already – he’s pretty used to the view. Indeed in recent years the Frenchman has traded his hiking boots for a pair of sneakers in search of rally wins rather than the all-time championship high.
But through a modified championship points system where his presence proved more helpful than expected for the real 2024 goal – to help Toyota be crowned manufacturers’ champion for a fourth year running – and simply his own mega performances, Ogier has accidentally become a contender for the drivers’ championship again.
And this isn’t like when he sensationally led the way after a record-breaking Rally México win in 2023 despite missing the preceding trip to Sweden. Ogier has entered the race when it really matters: the business end of the season.
The Acropolis has dented his hopes somewhat, but Ogier remains Toyota’s highest placed driver in the standings. So whether he likes it or not, Ogier has no choice but to fight for the ninth championship crown he always insisted he was never interested in claiming.
In many respects that positions him in a no-lose situation. Should he pull it off, he’ll have done so despite missing three rounds. Should he fail, he missed three rounds so why should anyone have expected him to be in the race? Another world title would be nothing more than an accidental bonus.
Ogier waved goodbye to full-time rallying in 2021, meaning his motivation now is different
Ogier is quite rightly proud of his career achievements, but attempting to challenge the Sir Ranulph Fiennes of the WRC, Sébastien Loeb, has never been a motivating factor. The Loeb comparisons are an irritation that have haunted him his entire career.
Even if he hadn’t gone on to emulate his contemporary with a similarly dominant grip on the WRC that Loeb enjoyed, the fact Ogier was also a Frenchman called Sébastien made such comparisons totally inevitable – through the early phase of his career in particular. But being the second coming, all of Ogier’s incredible milestones and accomplishments have been contextualized by what Loeb had done before.
The two great Sébs have had a tricky relationship over the years. It began in harmony with Loeb positioned as a mentor to Ogier, before things got feisty (and at some points sour) during their full season together as Citroën team-mates in 2011.
Ogier faced plenty of questions during 2011 after an uneasy year, unhappy to play the number-two role to Loeb
Time has healed the wounds and morphed the relationship into one of great respect. You need only recall that epic fight for victory on the 2022 Monte Carlo Rally between the pair, and how much they relished it, as proof of where they both now stand with one another.
But by the time Ogier did seal an eighth championship in 2021 (a figure he also wasn’t ever planning to achieve but did so because he didn’t want to end his full-time rallying career in a COVID-curtailed season), an obvious question lingered: ‘Will you do one more and match Loeb?’
When Loeb sealed number eight (ironically in that tense 2011 season with Ogier), he’d doubled the championship count of the next best. He had no yardstick for comparison because he is the yardstick.
Ogier does well to entertain questions and comments about his career in comparison to Loeb, but it can’t be the greatest feeling in the world to be placed into the shadow of another great rather than celebrated for your own greatness. If you’ll excuse this author sharing a brief personal anecdote, a lot of my life growing up was measured against my (older) twin brother, and it’s only taken adulthood and our own separate lives and careers to extinguish those often unhealthy comparisons.
All of that isn’t to say that Ogier doesn’t consider rallying’s history and his own legacy within the sport, though. His comments after breaking the aforementioned México victory record last year are revealing.
“You know, this kind of record as well, it has be taken with perspective,” Ogier said. “You know, it’s always… I like to compare what is comparable in life.
“But here I don’t know how many starts I have compared to, I don’t know… talk about legends from the ’90s, there was no Rally México. That’s why maybe the Monte, and again I come to this rally, but at least that one’s always been there. And that one is a monument of our sport, everyone has done it, it’s a bit more comparable still.
Ogier covets being the best driver of his time rather than all time
“Talk about the ’80s; how many drivers had to fight much more often than we do with technical issues? So I believe I like to be the best of my time. But being the best compared to all time is, for me, always subjective.”
Loeb and Ogier’s careers did converge, but at a time when Loeb was winding down and Ogier was rising up. As easy as it is for the rest of us to do, that’s why Ogier doesn’t hold himself to Loeb’s lofty standards. His time was the 2010s, and you cannot for one second argue that Ogier didn’t own that decade.
So if Ogier does reverse the tide against Neuville and seal title number nine, let’s not worry about how that rates him relative to Loeb. Let’s instead celebrate it for what it means for Ogier: another scarcely believable achievement from a monumental career.
At the peak of his own mountain.
