THE SWITCHBACK

It was a busy winter in the WRC, with a number of the big players in the pinnacle of rally switching colours ahead of the 2019 season.

 

The big headline must be the return of Sebastien Ogier to Citroen. The world champion was Sebastien Loeb’s (more on him later) understudy with the French team from 2009 till 2011, winning seven rallies with the manufacture, the first coming with Citroen’s junior line-up in 2010.

 

With a break into the Citroen first team to partner Loeb in halfway through 2010, thinks looked rosy for Ogier. However, a fall out with the then seven-time world champion Loeb due to Citroen’s favouritism the senior Frenchman in the 2011 season saw a rift in the team, Ogier obviously the one that gave, moving on at the end of the season.

 

Racing a Skoda Fabia S2000 under the Volkswagen Motorsport banner for 2012 would turn out to be an inspired move, with the dominant Polo R bursting onto the scene a year later. Four world championships followed before he added another two with M-Sport Ford and their Fiesta.

 

He looks to add that elusive championship with his home manufacturer, and now with Loeb out of his way, he at least won’t have a team-mate to stop him.

 

Another driver whose path to the top involved a Skoda, Esapekka Lappi partners Ogier in the second Citroen as it was all change for the French manufacturer in the search for a first title of any sort since their double success in Loeb’s final full year of 2012. Lappi moves on from reigning constructor champion Toyota a solid season and a half with the Finnish based, Japanese brand.

 

With Citroen losing their partnership with Abu Dhabi, it was announced there would be no third car, forcing Loeb out of the Citroen fold. The greatest of all time, keen to remain in the championship part-time after a successful spell in 2018, would land at Hyundai, sharing a third car with Dani Sordo. It would be the first time since 2000 that Loeb had set foot in a car other than a Citroen in the WRC.

 

Other than Hayden Paddon being dropped from the Korean team’s line-up and the addition of Loeb, Hyundai went business as usual. Theirry Neuville and Andreas Mikkelsen take full-time drives for 2019.

 

2018 World Champions Toyota filled the Lappi shaped hole in their line-up with the fast but accident-prone Northern Irishman Kris Meeke, giving him a chance to bounce back from his brutal Citroen sacking of 2018. The team retained championship contender Ott Tanak and the experienced Jari-Matti Latvala.

 

The biggest casualties of the driver market were M-Sport Ford. With the six-time champion leaving, there was no real plug and play replacement. Elfyn Evans shuffled up the pecking order to number one driver and Teemu Suninen claimed a full-time seat. Skoda’s starlet and 2017 WRC-2 champion Pontus Tidemand will get a limited round seat as he looks to move on from five seasons at the second tier. M-Sport’s WRC-2 Pro driver Gus Greensmith will also get at least a round to prove his talent in the WRC car at some point this year.

 

The 2019 season will also be the first to feature the F1 style driver numbers, with the crews in the WRC each selecting their own. They are as follows…​