Loeb vs Ogier: Revelling in a rarity

We bring the stars out. We bring the women and the cars and the cards out.

Last week's Monte Carlo Rally was made for Tinie Tempah, and never more so than at the end of the first stage of the season.

The scene was set in the most dramatic, beautiful fashion, with the clearest, crispest, not quite coldest but chilly enough, night having fallen to welcome in the 2015 World Rally Championship.

Walking down the road towards the end of the Entrevaux opener, moisture from the afternoon's melt froze hard into the D10. A laser-like moon picked out the ice to give an impression of diamonds scattered liberally across the stage.

The stars were very definitely out.

Not long after came the cars.

And from the cars came the time cards.

The women? Two days later on the seafront. As Sir Stirling Moss is quick to point, when it comes to thoroughbred fillies, Monaco never disappoints.

Sebastien Ogier came through, fastest. But only just, Kris Meeke was just 1.7 seconds behind. Good on him. Great start.

Loeb's return stole the spotlight when the Monte kicked off © McKlein

What about Sebastien Loeb? Fourteenth in and with times indicating the road might be getting slower, it was hard to know just how far behind Ogier he'd be. Maybe half a minute? Maybe a minute.

The end of stage atmosphere dipped at such a suggestion. Surely a battle we'd talked up so much couldn't be over before it began, could it? Maybe. Equally, this was the Monte and the Monte makes and breaks heroes on a stage-by-stage basis.

Ott Tanak in, 8.9s up on Ogier. Eight point what?

WRC Live's Colin Clark is desperately chasing a split time for Citroen #4.

Seven seconds! Seven seconds...

How far in? If that's the last split, it's not quite so impressive.

Less than three miles in! Less than three miles...

The dream is good to go.

When Loeb crossed the finish line, Clark was the first to get confirmation of a 30-second advantage over Ogier. The Scot boomed it across the Alps, with his trademark "Come on!" undoubtedly triggering avalanches up and down the valley.

Loeb wouldn't believe it. In the end he had to. Starts don't get much better that this one.

And, for the following seven stages, the two Sebs held us captivated as their fight raged. First one way as Loeb - running further back on the road - made the most of improving conditions in the ice. Then the other; sun up, ice watered Ogier hooked the Polo into every cut, chopped every corner to make the most of his advantage while making it as difficult as possible for those following.

The nine-time world champion blasted into an astonishing early lead... © McKlein

He did so in full knowledge that Loeb would have done precisely the same thing; when cut, these two came from precisely the same French fabric.

Ogier's place at the front of the field would come as no surprise. Since his arrival in the World Rally Championship seven years ago, he's never been far from the limelight. P1 has been his home for the past two of those seven.

But to see Loeb running ahead of him for much of the opening day was near unbelievable.

The nine-time champion's tricky test and recce roll are well documented now, but still need to be given due consideration when quantifying his return to a series he's been away from for 14 months.

Quite honestly, Loeb's speed was unreasonable.

Or it would have been for any other driver. Sitting back and thinking about it, Loeb's speed made sense. This is a man who'd won seven Montes, 78 WRC rounds, stood on 116 world rally podiums and taken 900 stage victories. You know the numbers.

Having come to terms with the fact that a year going around in circles without his mate Daniel Elena pointing him in the right direction hadn't slowed Loeb much, if at all, the intensity of interest certainly woke us up again.

Granted, there was the novelty value of seeing Loeb in a rally car, but the attraction went much deeper than that. The king really was back. And divided a nation.

Hitting a rock ruined Loeb's chance of a phenomenal comeback victory © McKlein

Anybody standing at the end of stage five (ironically, the stage that did for Loeb) would have been left in no doubt that France only had one world champion rally driver. He was raised not far from the stopline in St Julien en Champsaur. And his name was Ogier.

At the end of stage one, however, the #1 Polo came and went largely untroubled, but when Loeb arrived a surge of excitement went through the crowd. The place was jumping, as it was wherever he went south of Gap.

But for every party comes a morning after. And, last week, there were two mornings after. The first came courtesy of a snow-covered rock on the outside of a slow right-hander, eight miles from the end of the day.

Loeb had lost his lead on the stage before and, had he been allowed split times, he would have known he'd dropped four seconds in the first couple of miles and another three in the next sector.

When his Citroen's left-rear impacted, that gap grew to 90 seconds and the deal was done.

Cue hangover one.

The second came at the finish, the podium and the press conference.

Loeb was gone. Nowhere to be seen. After all the hype and all the action, it was all over again.

Give it a while and it'll be like it never happened. Ogier won another rally and, remind me, who was eighth? Was it Martin Prokop? Oh yeah, it was multiple world champion and God of the rally world Sebastien Loeb.

Is it Loeb the WRC needs, or just someone to fight Ogier? © McKlein

The end of this particular dream definitely needs a bit of work...

Or does it?

Much as I like Loeb, I wonder if it was him or the competition that really fired the interest again last week.

For the past 10 or 15 years, the WRC's definitely struggled in terms of competition.

Yes, there was Loeb and Gronholm, but in all honesty - and please don't take this personally Bosse, you were once and remain a titan among sportsmen - Loeb held the upper hand. As the 1623 points he scored in his career testify...

Then there was Loeb-Ogier, but just when that was coming to the boil a man in a suit in a Versailles building with chevrons on the side put an end to it.

And now we have what? An intra-team rivalry between Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala. But how tasty will that get? Latvala has the speed and increasingly the mental agility and consistency to carry the threat through the season, but he's simply not nasty enough to make good copy.

Until Hyundai's evolution arrives mid-season, Kris Meeke starts his winning run from Finland forward or M-Sport's young guns come of age, our best hope for some more feistiness comes with rule change and running-order regulation.

Or the chance for another 'one-off' from Loeb. Those two might well be connected...

But, for now, let's just be glad we got one more chance to see the light from the WRC's brightest star.