Ogier remains firmly in the title fight alongside his team-mates Elfyn Evans and Kalle Rovanperä. He trails championship leader Evans by 13 points, with a total of 70 still available.
On the opening short stage of Rally Japan, which began on Thursday, Ogier showed solid pace. He was only 0.4 seconds slower than Rovanperä’s benchmark time, placing fourth overall.
“I would say, as always, there isn’t a single rally in the season where you come out of recce thinking, “Oh, this one’s going to be easy.” They all have their challenges. Here, I think the biggest difficulties are probably the new section and the changing weather we can expect during the weekend — that’s definitely going to spice things up. So, we’ll see,” Ogier previewed.
As the first stage of the morning already showed, the margins in Japan are extremely tight. The rally is contested mainly on narrow asphalt roads, so full concentration is required at all times.
“There’s rarely much margin for error anyway, but for sure, some sections are super narrow, and in the end, it’s just about placing the car precisely on the road in the moment. That’s why I mentioned that, to win, you often need the luck of the champion — I’ve experienced that many times in my career,” Ogier said.
“But I also know that this sport can sometimes bite you quite hard, even when you feel you’re doing a good job. The good thing is, I learned that a long time ago. I try not to overthink it — I’ll just give my best, and we’ll see how it turns out,” he continued.
Ogier also made it clear that he isn’t calculating different scenarios. He’s going out to fight for victory – the surest way to secure a ninth world championship title.
“Since we decided to go for the championship, the plan has been to score more points than the others at every rally to catch up,” Ogier stated firmly.
“After Chile, it’s true that we took the lead in the championship, and we came into Sardinia with, for the first time, I would say, a slightly different approach — not going flat out, but trying to be smart. Still, we weren’t so successful,” Ogier recalled.
Ogier’s new approach didn’t work in Central Europe, as he went off the road and lost his championship lead in the process. The Frenchman has no intention of repeating that mistake.
“But as I said, I really feel I couldn’t have done much differently. I was just controlling my pace, not really pushing — and it didn’t pay off. But now, at least, it’s clear again that we need to perform. There’s no room for management anymore; we need to fight back at some point,” he concluded.
