Why Ogier's Citroen future is in doubt

Black widow? Hunstman? Funnel-web? Or maybe, possibly, just a common Tegenaria domestica. I wasn't sure.

And I wasn't about to take any chances with the saucer-sized spider, which had checked into the same hotel room as me. I legged it.

Last week the World Rally Championship returned to Australia. And there were parts of it I hadn't missed at all.

Almost to a man (and woman), the WRC seems to bring out the Steve Irwin in everybody.

While I was keen to talk about the state of the New South Wales stages and how much like New Zealand they were, all anybody else seemed interested in was the story about Subaru co-ordinator George Donaldson, who had been poking a brown snake with a stick.

Whether it's the wildlife, the mesmeric scenery that comes when the Great Dividing Range bumps into the Pacific Ocean, or those roads, I don't know. But, on its return to the WRC after a year out, Rally Australia worked.

This time it had moved south in New South Wales - away from the gum tree-hugging-home of Kyogle's environmental set - and arrived in Coffs Harbour.

Rallying doesn't have a particularly lengthy history in Australia, but the history it does have is largely based on the Southern Cross Rally, which ran down the Coffs Coast.

With that in mind, you have to ask what on earth we were doing running the green gauntlet in the first place in 2009.

As much as the event was roundly scorned two years ago, it was immediately cherished in Coffs.

From the Ford Focus RS WRC sitting on the runway at Coffs airport to the slightly mad old girl selling cakes in her front garden wearing a faded Martini T-shirt on the road through Ulong, Coffs Harbour just got Rally Australia.

The Coffs fans 'got' Rally Australia © sutton-images.com

And Rally Australia got a home which, in time, could rival its super-successful 17-year history on the other side of the country in Perth.

While Rally Australia made its own luck on the commercial side, Citroen's two DS3 WRCs bouncing through the trees turned the event on its head and rewired the championship for the remaining three rallies.

For rally winner Mikko Hirvonen, taking 25 points down under was the easy part. He's still 15 adrift of championship leader Sebastien Loeb and the really hard work starts now for the Finn.

Flashes of inspiration and pace from the Ford team were evident on Rally Deutschland, the season's first asphalt round last month, but the Hirvonen Fiesta RS WRC is going to have to be on song more than ever before if he's going to carry the fight to Loeb in the Frenchman's backyard in a couple of weeks.

Can he do it? In theory, of course he can. In practice, it's unlikely.

In Australia, Loeb was quick to talk up Hirvonen's return to the fight. That's firstly because of his unassuming and decent nature.

Secondly, because Hirvonen is a potential title contender, and thirdly because he knew it would help to rally the Citroen team behind him.

The French firm is now faced with an interloper in what was shaping up to be an all-Sebastien scrap through to the end of the season.

But if Sebastien Ogier had listened carefully when the bonnet of his car hit a tree last Friday, he'd have heard another noise; The noise of his title tilt being flushed down the toilet.

It would have been naive in the extreme to think, post-Germany and the pro-Loeb team orders, that Citroen would have allowed them to fight for the rest of the year.

Ogier was much slower than this on the final stage © sutton-images.com

This theory was hammered home when team manager Sven Smeets told Ogier of the plan to find Loeb a point from what had looked like a potentially pointless Australia in the wake of the champion's inverted day one departure.

The plan was a simple one: the second DS3 WRC would pull over not far into the penultimate stage and wait for 10 minutes.

Ten minutes.

That's how much time Ogier had to drop to let Loeb past.

You wonder what Ogier did to pass the time. Maybe he took a page from his co-driver Julien Ingrassia's pacenote book to draw up his Christmas card list. Only to scratch a few names off...

Is Malcolm Wilson's name at the top of the list? Quite possibly. Could Ogier really jump ship? Absolutely.

There are a couple of stumbling blocks to a possible deal. The first is that Ford has yet to commit beyond this season (although this is increasingly seen as a matter of when rather than if); and secondly, can Ford afford Ogier?

The answer to the latter is undoubtedly no, at his current rate.

But, if he wants out of Citroen and into the only car capable of matching his current motor, then surely he'd be prepared to take a hit for a season to cast aside the shackles and take a shot at Loeb.

Big decision, though, isn't it? Citroen made him, Citroen pays him and Citroen remains his best chance of being a champion.

But Citroen doesn't champion him. Sebastien Ogier is not Citroen. And probably never will be.

It took Loeb seven years of success, 66 wins and a decade of dedication to build that kind of unbreakable bond.

The talk down under was of a straight swap between Hirvonen and Ogier.

Could Hirvonen swap seats with Ogier next year? © sutton-images.com

Given Ogier's reluctance to shed any light on such a deal, I sought the opinion of the Finn. He promised this was the first he'd heard of it. And he looked entirely genuine. Entirely genuine right up until the point where he did one of those grins.

As the world championship returns north of the equator for the final time this season, it's looking more exciting than ever before. This has already been an absolutely classic season and it's only going to get better between here and Cardiff - on and off the stages.

Quickly dashing back to the top of this tale just to clear something up - I don't want you to get the wrong idea about spiders and me. It's not like I'm scared of them or anything. Absolutely not. It's just that the arachnid was definitely going to eat me.