WRC 2018 underway as Ogier holds sway

Sebastien Ogier’s title defence will headline the 2018 season, when one hopes to see Ott Tanak lead a stern challenge.

By the time you read this, Sebastien Ogier will have already kickstarted his FIA World Rally Championship title defence with the first event of the year – the Monte Carlo Rally. 

The 33-year-old made it five WRC championships in a row this year after seeing off fierce rivals Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak with two victories and a further seven podiums. 

There were rumours that Ogier might call it a day after dominating the WRC in a manner similar to his compatriot Sebastien Loeb, whose amazing nine straight titles looks mighty hard for anyone to eclipse. 

Perhaps the reason Ogier feels ready and willing to go at it is because the 2017 season was the most competitive that the WRC saw in years. One has to go back to Loeb’s battles with Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen around ten years ago to find a season in which two drivers from different marques battled it out. Last year saw seven drivers from the four different manufacturers – Ford, Hyundai, Toyota and Citroen – claim a win. An accidental side-effect, if you will, of Volkswagen’s sudden withdrawal from the WRC that had drivers scrambling for seats, including those who piloted VW’s dominant Polo WRC machine. 

This year VW will be back, but in the WRC-2 class where the cars are built to R5 specifications, including the Skoda Fabia with which Gaurav Gill has won two of his three FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship titles. Skoda has been the dominant manufacturer in WRC-2 until now, so the intra-VW Group battle between it and VW Motorsport (much like how Audi battled Porsche in WEC) should be interesting. 

Back to the WRC, fans will hope to see a battle between Ford and the factory Toyota team, now that the Japanese manufacturer has poached rallying’s hottest rising star from the blue oval. Estonia’s Ott Tanak will now lead Toyota’s quest to become WRC champions again (they last won a drivers’ championship in 1994 and a constructors’ title in 1999). 

Tanak kept Ogier honest at M-Sport Ford, and his seven podiums in the season’s 13 rallies, including two wins, marked him as an established star.