After Rally Finland at the end of August, Ogier announced that he would compete in all the remaining rounds of the WRC season. This would give the part-time Toyota driver a chance to fight for the championship until the end and also help his team in the manufacturers’ title race.
Ogier was in contention for a big points haul in last weekend’s Acropolis Rally in Greece. However, he rolled his car during the final stage, causing him to miss out on Sunday’s points.
Check the full WRC standings here.
The French ace dropped to third in the championship, 38 points behind Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, who celebrated victory in Greece. Closing such a large gap in just three rallies will be an incredibly difficult task – essentially, Ogier will need Neuville to have bad luck in the remaining events.
“With this points system, it’s just not realistic to think about it,” Ogier admitted frankly.
According to Ogier, a personal championship is not his main focus.
“My target was to come to the rallies to enjoy them. It’s hard to say this, but the truth is I’m not paying too much attention to the title, and it doesn’t mean that much to me. I don’t want to say this now just because it didn’t work out this weekend. I said it before the start. If I can fight for the title, why not? I’ll do it,” Ogier explained.
Ogier has already changed his plans once this season and has participated in more rallies. But now it seems likely that Toyota is losing both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ title battles to Hyundai.
The question remains: will Ogier stick to his revised plan and drive all the remaining rallies of the season?
“I made the commitment to the team that I will do that, so I will not break this commitment to them,” Ogier clarified.
The next round of the season will take place in Chile in two weeks. After that, the Central Europe and Japan tarmac rallies are still on the calendar.
