The new season kicks off this week with Ogier’s home event as the legendary Rally Monte Carlo opens the calendar. Ogier has competed on a part-time basis with Toyota for the past three seasons, and he’s not quite ready to fully retire from rallying.
“I think new challenge is always exciting and we’re still there, 2025 pushing further than we thought maybe earlier on. But we have the chance of still enjoying it. Still driving for a fantastic team.” Ogier says.
The 2025 season brings updates to the cars as the hybrid units have been removed. This means there’s no longer as much power available.
“We’ll try to have some more fun this season in the car. We go down in power, which is never, let’s say, a positive news for a driver, but we’ll have to adapt. And of course the beginning of the season, there will be a lot of question marks and a lot of things to to develop,” Ogier reflects.
“Let’s see which team is taking the turn the quickest and which drivers also adapt the best to this new new kind of car.”
The new Hankook tyres will also be a significant challenge early in the season, as limited testing has left teams with little preparation.
“The other big change is the tyres. That’s a lot of things we need to discover. Only one day of testing is very little. We try our best to explore as many conditions, as many configurations as we can. But I think it will be a Monte where a lot of drivers will still have a doubt on many areas. We’ll have to trust our feeling and make the best of it with this small preparation,” Ogier concludes.
The Rally Monte Carlo begins on Thursday with night stages and concludes on Sunday.
