The plan to topple Ogier in 2016

Jari-Matti Latvala has seen this one coming. We've tried to dress it up, but it's no good. He's smiling, putting us through it. If we want this one, we're going to have to work for it.

He puts us out of our misery.

"I know what you are saying," he offers. Finally.

In for a penny... "Aren't you worried you're running out of time, Jari-Matti?"

He takes a deep breath.

"Look at Marcus [Gronholm]," he says. "Look at Tommi [Makinen]. And Sebastien Loeb. Look at nearly every world champion... They were over 30 when they won for the first time. Colin [McRae] is still the youngest."

He's right. Since 1979, there have been 17 world champions. Latvala is still younger than eight of them were when they took their first title. For information, McRae was 27 when he took the 1995 crown. Juha Kankkunen was the youngest in 1986, but the Scot beat him by four months, nine years later.

But he's right. Latvala's lack of age concern is understandable. Big Bjorn Waldegaard, first ever world champion? Thirty-six. Stig Blomqvist? Two years older than that. Hannu Mikkola? He gives Latvala real room for manoeuvre: Mikkola was 41 when he finally landed the big prize with Audi in 1983. Latvala was 30 years old last year. So he still has plenty of time.

Makinen was 32 when he won the first of his four WRC titles in 1996 © LAT

"I know," he says, "that I am getting older. But I think that I'm at a very good age right now for the sport. I'm getting more mature and I have the experience."

It's that experience that fools you. Latvala has started 156 rounds of the World Rally Championship. That's 10 more than McRae managed. Latvala's first outing at the highest level was in 2002.

He's been around the service park a long time. As one of the new generation, he's done his learning at the pinnacle of rallying, whereas the likes of Mikkola and Blomqvist cut their teeth in domestic series and then the British Rally Championship.

So, age is no barrier.

That just leaves Sebastien Ogier... The Frenchman's a slightly more daunting prospect.

This, if you're reading this, Jari-Matti, would be a good time to look away.

Ogier has dominated Latvala for the past three years. The likeable Finn shouldn't take that too personally - Ogier has dominated everybody for the past three years.

But it's J-ML who gets it in the neck the most for not being able to keep up with the flying Frenchman - they're in the same team and using the same kit. In the past 39 rallies, Latvala has won eight, been on the podium 22 times and hauled in 563 points. Not bad, by all accounts.

All accounts except Ogier's. He's won 25 rallies, finished top-three 31 times and stacked up 820 points. Oh yeah, and three world titles. And scored 136 more fastest stage times.

Latvala gets a hard time for his record versus Ogier

How on earth do you try to take on a team-mate with stats like that? Psychologically, you're not just on the back foot, you're not even out of bed.

OK, you can come back now, Jari-Matti.

Latvala has a plan. He has lots of plans. He's spent the winter skiing and plotting. Fortunately, he's happy to share his plans with us. "First of all," he says, "I'm not going to say I am going for the championship."

Good plan, that'll fox Ogier - not to mention your employers..."I am going 110 per cent for every rally," he adds. "But, that doesn't mean I'm going to try to win every rally."

OK...

"Look at last year's championship, look at the start of the year," he says.

Really? Do you really want to go there? Three rallies into 2015, Latvala was 62 points down on Ogier. Sixty-two. That's bonkers.

"In the first half of the season," he says, "I have never been so successful. I have usually had to wait for the second half of the year for the rallies where I go well. So now I have to play the tactics. And the tactics are to not try to be winning every rally - sometimes I have to take the podium and wait for the second half where I am more suited."

We saw that strategy sporadically last season. In Argentina, for example, where he was content to run a risk-free second. That was working well, until his Polo coughed and died with a fuel-pump problem on El Condor.

Latvala is happy to settle for second on early rallies such as Monte Carlo © McKlein

Last year's Monte Carlo Rally was a better example.

"I did not have such a good record with this rally," he says, "so last year I was determined to take the points and I was second.

"There were definitely times and places where a different approach would not have worked. I remember coming out of that first stage, where there was so much black ice and I knew that in the years before, in similar conditions, I would have tried to attack too much.

"I seemed to understand the conditions a little bit last time. It was a real eye-opener to see how slow and how careful you really have to be in the snow and ice. This has to be my approach."

His theory on the second half of the year absolutely bears out. From Finland until the end of the season, Latvala outscored Ogier by 14 points. It would have been a lot more, had it not been for a mistake on what looked to be a fairly straightforward Sweet Lamb left-hander.

In a nutshell, isn't that the way things go for Latvala: it's all good, until it's all bad? "That rally was different," he says, "I was really pushing for the win there..."

For the past two years, Finland has been a source of immense pride for Latvala. He's shown Ogier the way home both times. In 2014, his victory in Jyvaskyla was as good as anything any driver has ever produced down those roads.

Competing at home brings the best out in everyone - but it almost carries Latvala to another level.

"I definitely need more rallies to be like Finland," he says. "Finland lifts me and boosts me and it gives me even more concentration. It's that concentration I need on every rally. It has to be 110 per cent every time. This is the idea that I'm trying to work for, to make every rally the same: 110 per cent approach as in Finland."

Latvala is painfully aware that he hasn't put enough pressure on Ogier. He's been the one making the mistakes early and, once he's got his nose in front, the Frenchman has proved impossible to beat.

Latvala has flown to Finland wins in the past two seasons © McKlein

"If I can avoid the mistakes," he says, "then it means he cannot afford to make any mistakes of his own. That gives pressure to him. If we can do that and sustain a challenge and a threat, then we can see what happens. But all I can do is concentrate on my own job."

That's not necessarily the case with some of the other drivers. Thierry Neuville and Kris Meeke have, in the past, been happy to give the tiger a bit of a poke. Sometimes it's worked; sometimes they've been bitten.

Latvala's not interested in that kind of approach. "I don't play the mind games," he says, "I'm the honest guy who just tries to concentrate on my own performance. I have a lot of passion for this year's championship. And being nice is good, everybody likes it - but nobody remembers it. Being a nice guy's not going to make me a champion."

Latvala is an extremely nice chap. Too nice to be a world champion? "I am what I am," he says. "I can't change it. This is a new year and I am looking forward to doing my job."

A Latvala title at the end of the season would be well celebrated in the four corners of the service park. Latvala has been here for a long time and the WRC has endured the highs and lows: the terrifying crash in Portugal in 2009, the tears of his final-stage superspecial shunt in Poland later that season and the absolute highs of that first victory in Sweden in 2008 or his victory at home in '14. Latvala's time at the top of the championship he loves has been the ultimate emotional rollercoaster.

And, when the lows have been very low, he has come close - probably closer than we will ever truly know - to being shown the door. He talks with genuine warmth of those M-Sport folk who stuck with him when his Ford Focus RS WRC shells were spending as much time in the bodyshop as they were on the stages.

Latvala's WRC career has included many crushing lows © McKlein

And, regardless of what anybody says, patience was wearing thin at Volkswagen last season. But then, at the darkest of times, Latvala manages to find a chink of light.

In Portugal, we all saw the light. Latvala beat Ogier in a final-day fight. Granted, the #1 Polo had been first on the road and sweeping the stones clean for the majority of the two previous days, while Latvala luxuriated in a faster line a few cars back. But, come Sunday morning in Porto, there was just 9.5 seconds between leader Latvala and Ogier with three stages to run. Three stages later, Latvala remained 8.2 seconds to the good.

Not only did he win, but he succeeded in getting under Ogier's skin - while still being himself. And that's got to be the key to Finland ending 12 years of French domination of the World Rally Championship.

But what if it's not Latvala? What if Jari-Matti can't make good on his promises or turn the tactics on to stack the early-season points? Who else can carry the fight to the all-conquering one from Gap.

Well, there is a third Polo R WRC in the field, that of Andreas Mikkelsen. The Norwegian has been with Volkswagen since the start of 2013, but only really emerged from beneath the protective cover of the junior-driver moniker last season. Win number one came a few months ago in Spain and, while he really needs to be stacking the 25-pointers up, a year-long title tilt is probably still too optimistic.

Citroen's Kris Meeke was the man most likely to upset Ogier's pace last season, but the Dungannon driver's reduced to a bit part this time around.

Meeke's former team-mate Mads Ostberg is back at M-Sport and driving a Ford Fiesta RS WRC - the car in which he has taken his sole win in the world championship.

Ostberg is back in a Fiesta after two years with Citroen © McKlein

Ostberg never settled into the DS 3 WRC, but the Fiesta always fitted like a glove. For his year to catch, a win in Sweden is an absolute must. If he can do that, then come away from the Americas with big points, who knows what might happen?

But in reality, standing on the outskirts of Rouaine on Thursday evening at the end of the first stage of the Monte Carlo Rally, all eyes will be on two numbers and four names. Numbers 3 and 4, and the names of Thierry Neuville and Dani Sordo.

Hyundai's i20 WRC is the next generation as well as the New Generation. Six months late in delivery, the car must hit the ground running in the 13 miles leading to the season's first stage end. And thereafter.

The accepted theory is that the South Korean car's on the money. From what we've seen in testing, it looks a good bit quicker, more efficient and more powerful than its predecessor, with weight distribution to breathe new life into the front tyres.

Hyundai has taken a big step with its new car. If we believe the stories coming out of Hannover, the spec sheet for this year's Polo bears a striking resemblance to the one that left Deeside 66 days ago.

So, it's down to the wheelmen. Sordo's a safe pair of hands who will deliver rally-winning potential in Germany and Spain - maybe even in September's all-asphalt return to China. On the dirt, it's down to Neuville and the team's rising star Hayden Paddon.

The first job for that pair, however, is to look beyond their own rivalry, which is undoubtedly building and bubbling. Neuville's probably the quicker of the two right now, but his confidence is still shot from a shocker in 2015. Paddon's getting faster and faster, but does he have the experience to target Ogier yet? Time will tell.

Either way, the last season for the current crop of World Rally Cars has plenty to keep us entertained until the modern-day incarnation of the Group B car arrives a year from here.

Follow the Monte Carlo Rally as it happens with Autosport Race Centre Live from 7pm UK time on Thursday

A full preview of the 2016 World Rally Championship, and the fight to stop Ogier, is in this week's Autosport magazine, available online or in print now.