How Ogier achieved a fitting Monte Carlo farewell

The 2021 World Rally Championship is under way and the Monte Carlo Rally celebrated its 110th anniversary year despite the ever-present threat of COVID-19. In the end, it proved to be an historic four days in the Alpes Maritimes, crowned by a record-breaking eighth victory for Sebastien Ogier.

Back in 1911, the founding fathers of the event saw an opportunity to use the glamour of motorsport to bring well-heeled visitors to the principality and its casino, which PG Wodehouse declared was solely designed to bring young men to ruin. The rally remains imbued with all the style of the Riviera; an event on which James Bond creator Ian Fleming was once a co-driver and that features stages on which the Mini-Cooper, Porsche 911 and Lancia Stratos are among the many to have burnished their legend.

There was considerably less pizzazz this year thanks to a devastating combination of coronavirus and road damage in the wake of Storm Alex. There were no fans, no Col de Turini, no ceremonial start and no photo opportunities at the casino.

Only 15 stages were scheduled within the draconian curfews in place through the Hautes Alpes prefecture, giving a total competitive distance of just 280km (around 170 miles), of which only 14 were run. Nevertheless, those 110 glorious years were celebrated, for which we must all be profoundly grateful in a winter of continued discontent for almost every major sporting event.

What's new?

The WRC teams arrived in much the same order as they left Monza barely six weeks earlier at the close of the 2020 season. Neither the cars nor the crews had changed drastically over the winter, save for an absence of the debonair Nicolas Gilsoul from his traditional position alongside Thierry Neuville. When you do the same thing year-in and year-out it's often hard to notice the passing of time, but the appearance of Martijn Wydaeghe alongside Neuville brought it home with a resounding thump.

So fresh-faced is he that you could be forgiven for assuming that Neuville's recruitment process involved standing in the middle of a Belgian scout hut and shouting 'can anyone here read a map?' In fact, Wydaeghe is an accomplished 28-year-old veteran of Belgian and European competition, and his composure in stepping into the role with just a few days' notice and zero practice was admirable.

"It was a pretty scary moment, luckily uphill, and I could pump enough and stop the car before the corner" Sebastien Ogier

The other new boy in the top class was a much more familiar face to WRC regulars, this being 18-time rally winner Jari-Matti Latvala. The Finn overtook M-Sport's Richard Millener as the youngest team principal in the series by just over a year when he agreed to hang up his helmet and take over from Tommi Makinen as Toyota's head man. Except, of course, Latvala hasn't hung up his helmet at all, he made sure that he would still be allowed to campaign his beloved historic cars in Finland on off-weekends before signing on the dotted line.

One move that Latvala has instigated is bringing another old boy from the Yaris WRC programme, and another of the nicest men in any sport, Juho Hanninen, to mentor Toyota's young Japanese prodigy Takamoto Katsuta.

"I never thought that this kind of job I could be at the age of 35," Latvala said before the start. "It was something maybe beyond my rally career time, around when I'm 45-50 something like this. So this was a huge surprise at the same time."

The biggest change of all in the service park was not a surprise, this being the return of Pirelli, replacing Michelin as sole supplier of WRC tyres. Last year's runner-up Elfyn Evans had suggested that the new rubber on offer for the Monte (supersoft, snow and studded varieties) lacked traction on snow and ice compared to the Michelins but gave a much bigger increase in grip on dry asphalt.

Ogier's unfortunate start

Testing had been severely limited for all teams by measures to contain the ongoing pandemic but defending champion Ogier's seat time was cut further when he managed to invert his Toyota and uproot a tree while his co-driver, Julien Ingrassia, needed a hospital check-up.

Despite this setback to the pair's pre-event preparations, Ogier approached the rally with the countenance of a lion who has heard the dinner gong. He is a native son of the rally's host town, Gap, and this year will be his last as a full-time driver: all of which bestowed an additional sense of purpose upon a man who had won the event seven times previously.

Rather than engage with the usual pre-start flimflammery about this being a long rally with changeable conditions, the Frenchman permitted himself to simply declare: "I'm here to win this rally, so I'm going to win it!"

Proceedings got under way with two stages on Thursday afternoon, both of which were won by the Hyundai of 2019 drivers' champion Ott Tanak. The Estonian had been in bullish form throughout the build-up, and it was noticeable in Hyundai's preview material that, while team-mates Neuville and Dani Sordo declared the manufacturers' championship to be their primary goal, Tanak simply said: "The drivers' championship."

At the first overnight halt, Tanak led the rally from the Toyotas of Kalle Rovanpera and Evans, with Neuville in fourth. Ogier was close behind him in fifth, but had not enjoyed the opening stages after his brake pedal repeatedly went to the floor.

"It was a pretty scary moment, luckily uphill, and I could pump enough and stop the car before the corner but, of course, after that my confidence went completely down and I was pumping all the time," he said. "It happened a couple of times during the stage so the rest of the loop was freaky!"

Hyundai hits trouble

Friday morning began in the small hours for gravel crews and mechanics as they prepared for an 0610 start time to comply with local curfews. This meant running the first two stages in the dark and, predictably, it was Ogier who shone brightest. Ogier and Rovanpera topped both stages, while Evans survived a half-spin to stay with them overall. It was all going beautifully for Toyota, but at Hyundai the rally was unravelling quickly.

Tanak had elected to take the same mix of tyres as the Toyotas for the morning loop, four supersofts and two studded, but both Neuville and Sordo went with three of each type, obliging them to make crabwise progress at a pace considerably off that of their rivals.

"It has not been the rally for which we were targeting and not the rally that Hyundai should do... So it's not good" Andrea Adamo

Although he was on the money with his tyre choice, Tanak's engine suffered a recurrence of the stalling in low speed corners that had plagued him and Neuville through 2020. Soon he too began to fall away from the lead battle. Matters improved marginally as the day wore on, with Sordo only 1.3 seconds off Ogier's winning time on the final stage of the day, but Tanak was slowed by a misty windscreen and Neuville's day was no better.

"We didn't do the best tyre choice," the Belgian said ruefully. "Also in stage four my gravel crew wasn't able to go through the stage because they had an incident on the road section so I had no corrections in the pacenotes and we lost a lot of time... and we made a spin towards the end."

Hyundai principal Andrea Adamo was an unusually low-key presence where the media was concerned, presumably to save his voice for any hairdryer treatment that might be meted out to his team.

"We have seen Dani... this morning lost in the middle of nowhere, in the first time of going. The other [Hyundais] going up and down," he said, with the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom. "Surely so far it has not been the rally for which we were targeting and not the rally that Hyundai should do... So it's not good. So we have not to find excuses."

Toyota's dominance of the day was not without its own share of misadventure, however. Rovanpera incurred a 10s penalty for late check-in after a warning light needed investigation by the roadside, while Ogier lost the overnight lead to Evans after losing 30s to a puncture on the penultimate stage of the day. It is never difficult to distinguish between a Frenchman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine, and in the heat of the moment Ogier gave Pirelli both barrels.

"I mean, we knew this tyre was very weak for punctures and unfortunately it happened already," he thundered, taking some of the lustre from Pirelli's return.

With one stage left in the day, Ogier harnessed his ire and utterly demolished the field, winning back 16s from Evans in one fell swoop. It was a magisterial performance.

Ogier stamps his authority

Another pre-dawn start beckoned on Saturday morning and with it came an abundance of snow and ice. This eased Hyundai's tyre choice issues as everyone went off with studded rubber, although, based on Ogier's assessment, it seemed brave indeed for some runners to only take one spare.

Once again, Ogier delivered the rallying equivalent of an Ayrton Senna pole lap: absolute conviction resulting in a time 18.7s faster than Evans and 20s faster than anyone else in the field. It was to prove the decisive moment in the rally.

Despite the pre-dawn chill, Ogier's forehead was lavishly bedewed with the old perspiration of endeavour and he was wide-eyed as he attempted to describe what had just occurred: "It was very difficult conditions. There was ice obviously but it didn't feel like we had studs, it was just sliding away. It was tricky!"

Toyota now held the top three positions and Hyundai's erstwhile leader Tanak was falling even further behind, having picked up a puncture early on in the morning's first stage.

"I immediately had a spin and next corner there was a loose stone inside," he said, with all the jauntiness of a wet cat. "It's a beautiful morning!"

The Estonian's misery reached Tolstoy-esque proportions on the very next stage, however, when another puncture put him out of the rally completely, having already used his single spare. Adding insult to injury, Tanak subsequently received a suspended one-rally ban for attempting to drive back to service in a car that was not roadworthy.

"I think I almost have tears in my eyes now. I think it was a good decision to do one more year" Sebastien Ogier

It was a busy event for the stewards, who also had to haul Ogier, Wydaeghe and Sordo's co-driver Carlos del Barrio over the coals for failing to fasten their helmets properly on the stages, serving €400 fines upon them all.

Up at the front of the field, Ogier began to pull away from his pursuing team-mates while Rovanpera began to slip back, giving Neuville an unexpected sniff at contending for the podium. The Belgian girded his loins and put in a superlative performance to win the day's penultimate stage by 12s from the second-string Hyundai of Pierre-Louis Loubet as the Toyotas struggled, Rovanpera 24s in arrears, Ogier 42s and Evans 46s.

Normal service was resumed on the day's final test with Evans heading a Toyota 1-2-3, which kept him in the hunt against Ogier and bought Rovanpera a little time in his battle with Neuville. The Welshman was mightily relieved.

"I needed that, really," he said. "It's been a bit of a frustrating day, just not really been on the money... we'll keep the pressure on!"

Sunday brought a later start and the sort of crystalline skies and snow-lined Alpine roads that define the Monte Carlo Rally. Ogier just held off Neuville by 0.7s to win the first stage of the day while a puncture cost Rovanpera almost a minute, effectively surrendering third place overall to the Hyundai.

On the penultimate stage, Ogier beat Neuville and a more sprightly Sordo. As usual, the rally then ended with a powerstage which, for the first time in WRC history, not only brought bonus points for the drivers' championship but also for the manufacturers' tally. It was a Toyota whitewash. Ogier rounded off a perfect closing chapter to his Monte Carlo story to claim the fastest time and five extra points, ahead of Rovanpera and Evans.

With this win, the 50th of his career in the top flight, the seven-time WRC champion both equalled Walter Rohrl's 37-year-old record of winning the event with four different manufacturers and broke the record for most Monte Carlo wins previously held by his old nemesis, Sebastien Loeb. At the finish line in Entrevaux, it was an understandably emotional winner who took the applause of his team, his rivals and FIA president Jean Todt.

"It's not a bad end of the weekend," Ogier said hoarsely. "The car's been amazing, I really enjoy the weekend. It's been such a pleasure so I think I almost have tears in my eyes now. I think it was a good decision to do one more year."

It was an entirely fitting coda to the Ogier era in Monte Carlo and, for Toyota, gave the team a firm footing at the start of a season, which may yet have its schedule thrown into further disarray by the blight of coronavirus.