The votes are in, and the verdict is to be delivered.
We asked you to vote for who you felt was the greatest World Rally Championship driver of all-time, and you responded in your thousands!
Afforded three votes, several names cropped up allowing us to create your Top 50 drivers ever to grace the WRC – a neat number given 2022 marked the 50th season of WRC.
Throughout this week we’ll be trickling the results. Yesterday we revealed 10-6, on Thursday you’ll have seen 20-11, Wednesday 30-21, Tuesday 40-31 and on Monday we unveiled 50-41.
Now it’s time to put you out of your misery. It’s time to find out which driver is the greatest of all time, according to the DirtFish readers:
5 Markko Märtin
Markko Märtin has made the top five somewhat unexpectedly given he was not a world champion – although he did show the promise to become one.
A couple of learning years with Subaru and then Ford led to Märtin leading the team’s charge in 2003 with the revolutionary new Focus WRC. It was a combination that yielded five victories over the course of 2003 and ’04, and led the championship at one stage.
But with Ford’s future uncertain Märtin decamped to Peugeot for 2005 where his WRC career came to a sudden and tragic end when co-driver Michael Park was killed in a crash on Rally GB.
4 Colin McRae
Few drivers possessed such raw talent as the late, great Colin McRae did. His single world title success in 1995 belied the natural ability McRae had.
Never one to give up in a fight for a win, McRae was spectacular to watch but that did occasionally get in the way of more championship success – not least in 2001 when he famously crashed out while leading the title showdown for Ford.
Best associated with Subaru, McRae did have his moments with other brands like Škoda – placing a Fabia WRC on the 2005 Rally Australia podium before what was supposed to be a routine clutch change turned into a disaster and put him out.
3 Sébastien Ogier
Sébastien Loeb has pipped Sébastien Ogier here, then. But that shouldn’t decry from Ogier’s achievements in a rally car as he’s been nothing short of sensational throughout his career.
Rocking the boat alongside Loeb at Citroën, Ogier moved to Volkswagen and it proved to be a masterstroke as he claimed four world titles on the spin. When VW quit, Ogier joined M-Sport Ford and won two more.
A return to Citroën in 2019 didn’t exactly pan out as planned, but in his final two seasons as a full-time driver he won the 2020 and ’21 titles with Toyota. He remains part of Toyota’s lineup, but only for half the season.
2 Sébastien Loeb
Sébastien Loeb is the greatest WRC driver of all time according to the statistics, but he’s runner-up in these stakes according to you.
What can we say about Loeb? Record title holder with nine and record winner with 80, Loeb redefined the meaning of success in the WRC. Throughout his Citroën pomp he was virtually unbeatable.
His M-Sport drives in 2022 perhaps boosted his legacy even more though, as he proved he could indeed win rallies in a different team, and with a different co-driver.
1 Ott Tänak
The driver that interrupted the Sébastiens dominance of the WRC, Ott Tänak, has come up trumps here. A surprise? Perhaps – but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it.
The last few seasons have been tricky for Tänak but 2022 proved that his raw speed and desire to win still exists in abundance. With 17 rally wins and the 2019 world title, Tänak’s numbers are there to be upped too.
A return to the M-Sport fold that shaped him beckons for 2023, and you can bet Tänak will be pouring every ounce of his being into becoming world champion again.
