Ogier has confirmed that he will compete in the remaining rounds of the season and intends to challenge Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville in the championship battle. However, the task seems almost hopeless. The gap to Neuville is 27 points, with four rallies remaining.
With the new points-scoring system, making up such a gap is incredibly difficult. If Neuville drives cautiously in the remaining events and performs even modestly on Sunday, the Belgian will likely secure his first WRC title. Although, in motorsport, dramatic twists are always possible.
“I think it’s a difficult catch. It’s a long shot because it’s difficult to make real differences during weekend. You’ve seen it again in Finland. We are dominating him quite the whole weekend and having a strong race and at the end scoring one point more than him at the end of the weekend,” Ogier told RallyJournal.com.
“But first of all we have Greece ahead where a lot of things can happen this weekend. So let’s see what the situation on Sunday and we will probably see a bit clearer about our chances.”
With the old points system, Ogier would be much closer to Neuville, but the new scoring method has completely changed the game, as wins no longer carry as much weight.
“Let’s not talk about this because we are not with this point system, but I think everybody agrees that the current one has some issues and doesn’t really fit what happened during the rally weekends. But still it’s same for everybody,” Ogier said.
“Hyundai have been using it better than we we did. So that’s the only thing we can say. But let’s hope that for the future, some more intelligent system is coming back.”
Ogier does admit that the new points system has added some excitement to the Sunday stages.
“There is some positive in it. Having some those fights on the Sunday are really cool and I think we need to keep that. But the shift, the balance of the points need to be readjusted.” he added.
