Raining On Parades: Sebastien Ogier & VW Dominates WRC

Sebastien Ogier and Volkswagen continue to dominate despite resistance from Ford and Hirvonen

Defending World Rally Championship (WRC) champion Sebastien Ogier’s dominance can probably be summed up by looking at who finished second and third at the Portugal Rally.

Mikko Hirvonen, a Finn in a Ford Fiesta who used to – on occasion – force Sebastien Loeb to pull out all the stops to maintain his stranglehold on rallying. In third you had Mads Ostberg in a works Citroen DS3 like the one that the great Loeb (who has now moved on to touring cars) used to drive.

And Ogier destroys them by finishing around a minute ahead of them both. Mind you a 40 second gap to Hirvonen doesn’t seem like a lot at the finish of a gruelling three day WRC event.

That too when dealing with a driver who has 15 rally wins, 64 podiums and 252 stage wins to his career. And yet no drivers’ titles as yet. And if you look at the quality of the drivers and the technical package at their disposal who has pipped him – Loeb with Citroen and Ogier with VW – then you get the idea of how someone like Hirvonen can at least keep a WRC event somewhat interesting.

More so than his compatriot Jari-Matti Latvala who seems to be content living off his ‘wild’ driver reputation while helping along the development and picking up constructors points for VW.

There does, however, seem to be a limit to Hirvonen’s ability to get under a super drivers’ skin like say a Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae would do so to each other.

He is undoubtedly fast but there seems to be a limit as to how well he can assert himself in an organization.

Loeb and Ogier refused to be second best and so assumed number one statuses at Citroen and VW respectively.

Whereas when Hirvonen headed to Citroen in 2012, he was something of an afterthought to Loeb’s domination not just on the stages but even within the Citroen organization.

Rally teammates are just as possessive about what they perceive to be their ‘turf’ as F1 drivers although there are always drivers who choose to not get their hands dirty.

While avoiding such aspects of existing within a team structure is not necessarily a sign of weakness there is always potential to be left by the side of the road, so to speak.

With Hirvonen firmly back at Ford it seems like that will be far less of a factor. Although Ogier may be too far ahead to care.