The search for the new Sebastien

When Petter Solberg crossed the finish line at Rally GB in November 2003 and secured his first World Rally Championship title, little did we know what we were in for.

The popular Norwegian sent his fans, and those of the Subaru Impreza, into raptures with the hope of new-found success, and a future of many rally wins and titles to follow. But it didn’t turn out that way.

Since that historic day in 2003, not only has Solberg not one the title since, but only two drivers have. Incredibly, in a 12-year period, only Sebastiens Loeb and Ogier have tasted the ultimate success – Loeb on nine occasions, and Ogier three.

And if current form is any indication, it could be quite some time before anyone else tastes the ultimate success of a championship win.

Why is that? Are the Sebastiens simply that much better than everyone else, have their teams spent more money, or were their cars simply the pick of the bunch?

We decided to ask the World Rally Championship’s leading journalists their thoughts, and their answers are probably not all that surprising.

Sebastien Loeb is a nine-times World Rally Champion.Veteran print journalist, Martin Holmes, believes it’s the “excellence of the drivers and their teams” that make them so much better than their rivals.

WRC Radio reporter, Colin Clark, says the same, but goes into more detail.

“My view is yes, they are much better than anyone else. I think with Citroen and Loeb, his era was a little different in that at the beginning of his career I think there were other drivers who could have won the championship,” Clark says.

“The big difference with Loeb and Citroen was that Citroen built the car for Loeb – that hadn’t happened before in the World Rally Championship – it was built around him and it was built for him. You had a supreme driver, in a supreme team, with a supreme car and they really did show that for a decade. He was almost untouchable.

“There were a couple of drivers who came close. Hirvonen came close in 2009, but don’t forget Loeb had a huge off, uncharacteristically, in Greece, and then another one in Poland. He lost points in Australia that year with the non-homologation of the front suspension part.

“In other seasons drivers got close,” he adds. “In 2005-2006 he broke his arm and Gronholm had an opportunity to win, but it was a team effort that really dominated rallying. Was he that much better? Not at the start of his career, but I believe he was at the middle and the end of his career. He was an intelligent driver, Sebastien Loeb, and he learned and he kept getting better and he used his experience in a really clever kind of way.

Clark rates Ogier as a similarly intelligent driver.

“With Ogier, it’s the perfect storm. You’ve got the best driver, in the best car with the most amount of money.

“It really is an unfortunate situation for rallying in my view. I think what would have been great, perhaps, was for Ogier to go back to Citroen or maybe to go to Ford. There was a rocky patch a couple of years ago when his contract was up and we thought maybe he might go back to Citroen, or to Hyundai.

Experts believe Sebastien Ogier is currently unbeatable for the WRC title.“I would love to see Ogier in a lesser car – I still think he would win, because I do believe he is that much better, he is that much hungrier than anyone else, he’s more ruthless, and I think he’s more clever than anyone else.

“He’s a bright lad who understands what it takes to win, he hasn’t been handed his rallying opportunity and he’s had to fight from the start for his opportunities. It develops a hunger and he’s gone about things the right way.

“A lot of people think he should be a little more magnanimous, he should be a little more humble – no he shouldn’t, he’s a world champion and his formula is what does it for him. He also has that poker player face and doesn’t give anything away, which works well for him.”

WRC stalwart, and former Ford media man, Mark Wilford, says it’s an ongoing debate that shows no sign of ending.

“It’s one of the great bar room debates as to whether Loeb was the best rally driver the sport has seen,” Wilford says.  “It’s impossible to compare drivers from different generations as the sport has changed so much. But he is without doubt the greatest WRC driver of recent times.

“Let’s not forget he won world titles when previous champions such as Marcus Grönholm, Petter Solberg, Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz were still in full-time professional drives.

“Likewise, Sébastien Ogier is the fastest and, importantly, most consistent, driver in WRC today. Who knows what he will go on to achieve in terms of title wins?
 
Sebastien Loeb and Citroen were the perfect match, creating an era of domination.“Significantly, both won titles while driving for the dominant manufacturer of that period. Is that an indication of the outstanding qualities of the driver, the strength of the manufacturer, or a mix of the two?

Okay, so the Frenchmen are a cut above the opposition, but what about their rivals? Is the competition post-2003 weaker than what it was pre-2004, when the likes of Carlos Sainz, Tommi Makinen, Juha Kankkunen and Colin McRae fought year after year for the WRC title?

Holmes believes it is.

“On account of the progressive reduction in the number of top class professional teams, the competition is weaker,” he says.

Clark, on the other hand, doesn’t believe so.

“I don't think the drivers or the competition are any weaker than in 2003.

“I think Loeb and Ogier, and Solberg and Gronholm (in their glory days) would certainly have competed at the top in any era.

“The championship is weaker certainly, because we don’t have more drivers winning on a regular basis. Look at VW’s dominance! We’ve seen teams dominating in the past, but we’ve also seen team drivers swapping wins and no one driver dominating. The championship would be better if we had more drivers winning.”

Norway's Andreas Mikkelsen is seen as one of the drivers most likely to challenge Ogier.However, Wilford comes up with some stats that show everything is not all doom and gloom.

“Six of the top 10 closest WRC finishes have come since 2007, which clearly suggests that competition is closer and more exciting now than it has ever been,” he says.

The Loeb and Ogier / Citroen and Volkswagen dominance would indicate that their teams are spending more money than the opposition, and while Holmes agrees to this point, he also says that they are very clever in the way that they use their money to best effect.

Colin Clark agrees with Holmes’ comments.

“Yes, they did spend more money, but they did it more cleverly. Hyundai has a very, very healthy budget, and my understanding is that Toyota have a healthy budget as well.

“You’ve got to take it with a pinch of salt how much Volkswagen spent – anything up to 80 million Euros a year in the first couple of years. Toyota’s budget is nothing like as big as that, but it is a good budget.

“Citroen spent their money very cleverly. They built a very good car, they have very good engineering facilities and they built it around a driver. It’s why Sebastien Loeb’s cars were always difficult for other drivers to master.

“Volkswagen has spent their money very cleverly too. David Richards once said to me ‘success in motorsport directly correlates with the amount of money you spend – you spend more money, the car goes faster and you become more successful’. It’s a simple as that.”

Mark Wilford follows on from those comments.

“Volkswagen clearly has the biggest budget in the WRC. But it’s not purely the amount of budget a team has that is crucial. It is how the budget is used.

“There are many examples of teams with big budgets failing to achieve because the money was not spent wisely. Both Citroen and Volkswagen spent wisely and reaped their rewards.”

All that being said, it doesn't look like a rosy future for the WRC if we are hope to have more drivers (and teams) win rallies and championships.

Hyundai's Theirry Neuville needs to produce the speed many believe he is capable of.It will happen, but perhaps not in the short term.

“I think 2017 will be a big, big season,” Wilford continues. “New technical regulations and the return of Toyota will bring uncertainties to WRC. Will Volkswagen be as dominant as it has been for the last three years? Who knows.

“Drivers such as Jari-Matti Latvala and Kris Meeke have shown they can challenge Sébastien Ogier and both have the ability to be world champions. Further down the ranks, Esapekka Lappi is a huge talent in WRC 2 who deserves a chance in a front-running World Rally Car.”

Colin Clark isn’t so sure we’ll see any change at the top.

“Not this season!” he says bluntly.

“At the start of the year odds were offered on Sebastien Ogier of 9-2 on, and a lot of people actually argued that that wasn’t good value. My argument was that it was about a 23% return, tax free, and I would take that! Your money on Sebastien Ogier to win the Drivers’ title is as safe as your money in a bank.

“Barring any horrific accident, Ogier will win the title, he won’t be challenged, and while we’ve seen after round one that Meeke is showing glimpses, he won’t be doing the whole season and doesn’t have the consistency to challenge yet.”

So if not Meeke, is Ogier’s team mate Jari-Matti Latvala the biggest title threat?

“Consistency is Latvala’s bogey word and he is struggling. For Latvala, what worries me more than his off in Monte Carlo was his reaction to the off, the fact that he hit a spectator and didn’t stop. It doesn’t suggest to me that his mind is in the right place, and he’s feeling the pressure very badly.

“Normally, Latvala would have been the first driver you would have expected to stop under those circumstances, and I think that shows how much pressure he’s under. Sadly, I don’t see him being a challenger for the title.

“Mikkelsen has all the right attributes and has a long term contract with Volkswagen, but he has to up his pace. His comfortable, safe pace has progressed year on year and he’s now at a very, very good, safe pace that will probably get him a podium in every event if he wants it. But his issue comes when he has to up his pace, and everyone has to up their pace to compete against Ogier, who’s safe pace is beyond anything that anyone else can achieve right now.

“The big question for me is that when we do see Ogier put under pressure, has he got another quarter of a gear? I suspect he has, and if he finds that he'll just continue winning. For me, Mikkelsen is the best placed challenger, only because he’s in the best team and in the right car.

“I still firmly believe that Thierry Neuville is a real, real talent and I think we’ve got potential in this new Hyundai this year, although he won’t be a challenger this year. Neuville just needs to get his head in the right place, I think he’s got all the skills needed to be a challenger to Ogier, I think he’s got the raw speed to be a challenger, but again, lots of the drivers have the raw speed.

Citroen's Kris Meeke could be a challenger, but only has a limited WRC program in 2016.“Meeke does, but doesn’t have everything there yet, all the tools aren’t quite in the right place yet, it’s the same with Neuville.

“Hayden Paddon, from your neck of the woods, he’s one that impresses me, but he needs to continue to improve. He’s shown tremendous improvement over the past year. He has everything both mentally and physically, speed wise it just needs to come on a little more, and if it does he will be a challenger.

“But for me, the next world champion we’re looking at when Ogier decides to stop – because I think that will be the only time he’ll get beaten – is maybe Mikkelsen, possibly Neuville, possibly Hayden Paddon but, we’ve got 2017 coming, we’ve got new cars and new regulations coming.

“Citroen are going back to a tried and tested formula, which is building a car around a driver, and it’s an opportunity that Kris Meeke has never had in his life, and he’s going to need to up his game a bit next year as well.

“But it’s very difficult to project forward into 2017 not knowing the kind of investments being made. What we know is that Volkswagen will put a lot of money into it, although it might be slightly curbed by the problems that they are currently facing with the emissions scandal, and we know that Citroen will put a proper budget behind it.

“M-Sport, well, it’s their own money, will they have enough resources to build a car that’s capable of winning? I don’t know. And Hyundai is properly financed.

“I don’t see anyone beating Ogier, I really don’t, unless we see Volkswagen producing an ordinary car and someone else building an exceptional car next year, because that’s what will be needed to beat them – and then we’ll need one of the aforementioned drivers to up his game, and then we might see a challenger.

“In my view though, if Ogier is in the best car again next year, he’ll win, no question. He’s in a different league right now, and he’ll continue to be in a different league until he decides otherwise.”

- Peter Whitten

Sebastien Ogier has become used to spraying the victory champagne after wins in the World Rally Championship.

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