How Ogier held on after a shock bump in the road to triumph in Croatia

The debut appearance of Rally Croatia on the World Rally Championship calendar delivered a thrilling three-way battle for victory between the Toyotas of Elfyn Evans and Sebastien Ogier and Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville. It ended with reigning champion Ogier taking honours by the third smallest WRC margin on record: just 0.6 seconds.

The Balkan state has become a tourism hotspot in recent years, although this has primarily been focused on the picturesque Mediterranean coast around Dubrovnik, which gained worldwide renown as the city of King’s Landing in TV’s Game of Thrones. In order to restore a little of the capital’s lustre, therefore, Zagreb had been pushing for its premier rally, a fixture since 1974, to join the WRC as a showcase for the city’s baroque splendour and the rustic loveliness of the landlocked north of the country.

The route featured stages that bore comparison with the Monte Carlo Rally’s Col de Turini, sections of the Tour de Corse and many more classic stages besides, but by far the most pressing concern noted by the crews on recce was gravel and mud being dragged across the road from cutting the corners. The lexicon of motorsport has taken a battering in recent years, although this has largely been confined to circuit racing, where the word ‘overtake’ has nonsensically transformed from a verb to a noun; passing ‘podium’ and ‘pole’ as they travelled in the opposite direction. Now rallying has misguidedly introduced the word ‘pollution’ to describe muck on the road.

At a time when even essential motoring is under relentless attack from the eco-lobby, using this word in any context can only be viewed as an act of self-harm. In the eyes of our detractors, motorsport is burning fossil fuels for no purpose, yet the WRC community spent all weekend making statements such as: ‘There was a lot more pollution than I expected after the cars went through on the first loop.’ The optics of our sport dropped through the floor with every such utterance. Thank goodness, therefore, for the ever-sensible Ott Tanak. “The road is full of shit to be honest,” he said.

Ott Tänak, Martin Järveoja, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Austral / Hyundai Motorsport

Road position would therefore be vital, and on the first day it was Toyota’s championship leader, Kalle Rovanpera, who stood to gain the most from running first. On the opening 4.3-mile Rude-Plesivica stage, Rovanpera was fastest of all through the first split but, with a little more than half a mile to go, his Yaris WRC ran wide on a downhill right-hander and was pitched into the trees. It was a brutal accident, but both the young Finn and his co-driver Jonne Halttunen thankfully emerged unhurt.

“I was struggling with the understeer of the car for much of the whole stage,” Rovanpera said ruefully. “I just came in and did my braking and tried to go in through the corner, and I lose the car already in the entry of the corner, I never made the proper racing line… A bit too much speed and then understeer and that’s the result, so, my mistake.” It was almost a double calamity for Toyota as Ogier skittered just over an inch away from being pitched into those same trees but held on, only to hit a huge stone with the left rear and be obliged to ride on the rim to the finish.

“From when I’m here, most of the time, when there has been a difficult tyre choice we were able to pick the wrong one. So it’s something in the organisation I set up that doesn’t work. I take responsibility for it, and for which I had better move my ass and solve it” Andrea Adamo

Rovanpera’s exit handed the prized first place on the road to the Hyundai of Neuville, who duly made hay. Three wins on the four stages of the morning loop were the result, showing clearly how far the nascent partnership between Neuville and new co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe has progressed in recent weeks.

All of the frontrunners had taken six tyres with them for the morning loop, most using a mix of four hard and two soft-compound Pirellis or vice versa. Only Tanak’s Hyundai went a different route, going for five hard-compound tyres, and this meant he dropped 25 seconds over the four stages as he struggled to get heat into the rubber. This resulted in a breakaway for Neuville, with Evans in second, 7.3s behind, and Ogier another 5s further back.

Evans was quite content, but Ogier felt that he had misjudged his set-up for the morning run and would be making changes at the service halt. “It’s around the differential… something I haven’t tried in the [pre-event] test,” he said. “I expected, actually, more humidity, and yeah I try to make some change on that back to something I know and I hope to be able to pick up a bit more speed there.” With his differential tweaked, Ogier duly set three fastest times on the second four-stage loop to leapfrog Evans and close to 7.7s behind Neuville at the overnight halt.

Sébastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Saturday dawned warm and sunny, and for the Toyotas and the Ford Fiestas of M-Sport this meant bolting on hard-compound tyres. Hyundai elected to send all three cars out with two hard Pirellis and two softs, with another soft as the spare… and the result was catastrophic. Toyota swept to all four stage wins – two for Ogier, one for Evans and one for Takamoto Katsuta – while Neuville dropped out of the lead on the first stage of the day, surrendering more than half a minute before the lunchtime service.

The Belgian’s tyre woes were compounded by his engine stalling while attempting to use the handbrake, a fault that had previously blighted several rallies for him in 2020, and finally by a broken brake disc. Tyre choice was the biggest problem, however, and both Tanak and the third Hyundai of Craig Breen also dropped time, with Breen picking up a puncture on the first stage.

That same strategic frailty that Hyundai had shown in Monte Carlo this year and in rallies such as Turkey and Monza in 2020 obliged team principal Andrea Adamo to step forward. “From when I’m here, most of the time, when there has been a difficult tyre choice we were able to pick the wrong one,” he said. “So it’s something in the organisation I set up that doesn’t work. I take responsibility for it, and for which I had better move my ass and solve it.”

It was clear that in the afternoon, with the sun at its zenith, the hard compound was the only choice to make, and a suitably equipped Neuville began to tear lumps out of Ogier’s advantage. Two stage wins fell to the Hyundai in the afternoon, and Neuville gained an extra 10s when Ogier picked up a puncture on the first stage after service.

Katsuta completed stage wins on both passes through the 12-mile Stojdraga test, but then Neuville’s progress was stymied by another unforeseen glitch. “I had an issue with my jack and I couldn’t change tyres all afternoon loop, so they were already a bit dead for the last stage,” he said, ending his day closer to Evans but 10.4s behind the leader, Ogier.

Thierry Neuville, Martijn Wydaeghe, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC

Photo by: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport

With 50 stage miles to run on Sunday, there was some prospect of a battle to the finish, although Adamo remained fairly inconsolable. “If you sum up just the afternoon stage times, you have Ogier, Evans and Tanak within two tenths,” he said. “And, OK, Thierry a bit faster… I think that when the level of competitiveness is so high these silly mistakes are the things that will drive the result in the end.”

Sunday morning began with drama for Ogier after colliding with a member of the public’s car in a road traffic incident on his way to the first stage, resulting in a rearranged door that blew dust into co-driver Julien Ingrassia’s face and upset the Yaris’s aero package. This allowed an on-form Evans to pounce and snatch the lead from his illustrious team-mate after winning both of the first two stages. A colossal effort from Neuville to win the penultimate stage drew scant reward – he took just 0.4s from Evans – before the concluding powerstage got underway.

“It’s like it was a crazy rollercoaster for us this weekend between the punctures, the issue this morning obviously, and I was glad to still be in the race honestly and now just to catch this… I guess that’s why we do this sport, for the emotion” Sebastien Ogier

Neuville’s first split time was more than 12s faster than any of the early runners, but then he overshot the final junction and dropped 3s. Ogier survived a huge twitch that momentarily threatened to send him into a solid-looking house, but ended up faster than Neuville by 1s. At this point Evans seemed destined to hang on for the win, but the Welshman ran wide on the final complex of corners, and thus lost the rally by a scant 0.6s after three days of action.

Ogier was overjoyed. “Of course the emotion for us now is super-strong,” he said. “It’s like it was a crazy rollercoaster for us this weekend between the punctures, the issue this morning obviously, and I was glad to still be in the race honestly and now just to catch this… I guess that’s why we do this sport, for the emotion.”

Sébastien Ogier, Toyota Gazoo Racing

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Ogier therefore added a 51st WRC win on the 18th event he has conquered in his career, as well as breaking the 600 stage wins mark. He put himself back on top of the drivers’ standings with an eight-point cushion over Neuville, while Toyota now holds a chunky 27-point lead in the manufacturers’ points.

Behind the main event, the WRC2 category was won by reigning champion Mads Ostberg’s Citroen in his first outing since last December. The Norwegian’s cause was helped by the exits of current points leader Andreas Mikkelsen in an opening-day shunt and the frontrunning Nikolay Gryazin on the penultimate stage, promoting Teemu Suninen to second.

In WRC3, Kajetan Kajetanowicz took victory in his Skoda from Emil Lindholm and points leader Yohan Rossel, with Britain’s Chris Ingram finishing fifth after rising as high as third. Another Brit, Jon Armstrong, took victory in the opening round of this year’s one-make Junior WRC.

Sébastien Ogier, Julien Ingrassia, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT Toyota Yaris WRC

Photo by: Toyota Racing