First to speak in the video was Toyota’s Elfyn Evans. He didn’t have to think long about his greatest role model.
It was found within the same team. Evans cited the eight-time World Rally Champion and still-active Sebastien Ogier as his biggest role model.
“I’ve found myself competing against him and spent quite a few years on the same team, so it feels a bit strange, in a sense, to put Seb up there as my hero, but he was who I admired,” Evans said.
“Mainly for me, my hero was Bruno Thiry because Bruno Thiry was from the neighboring village. Yeah, he was some kind of a local hero, the star of the region and the area, and that’s why he was my hero,” Thierry Neuville explained on his part.
Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta has always been a huge admirer of Sebastien Loeb.
“I was really young and small, I was just watching TV because my father is a rally driver. Even though I didn’t understand any English at that moment, I felt like, ‘Oh, this guy is so cool,’ Katsuta smiled.
Ogier himself also highlighted some Finnish names. He always looked up to Ari Vatanen and Tommi Mäkinen. But his compatriot Sebastien Loeb also made an impression on him.
“Ari Vatanen was always very famous in France, so he was definitely a hero. For me, there was Tommi’s time with the Mitsubishi.”
“Sebastien Loeb was, for us in France, really amazing and definitely a role model for young rally drivers,” Ogier continued.
Ogier also mentioned the late Colin McRae. He became known to many through video games.
“Probably the first video game I played as a kid,” Ogier said, referring to the rally game named after the British driver.
Estonian champion Ott Tänak’s earliest rally memories are connected to Finland. He mentioned, among others, Mäkinen and Juha Kankkunen.
“The start of my memory is when my father used to go with his friends to see the Thousand Lakes Rally in Finland. Every time he came back, he tried to explain to me how the cars, flying from the jumps sideways into the corners, were like. At that time, it was Tommi, Juha, Didier Auriol, and all these guys. So, yeah, I guess this is the ‘wow’ effect I got from rallying,” Tänak recalled.
