Ogier: “Not to be in this stressful situation again”

Sébastien Ogier attendait avec impatience la première véritable confrontation sur asphalte de la saison. Une surface sur laquelle le Français estimait avoir la meilleure vision du potentiel de sa Ford Fiesta développée par M-Sport, après un succès inaugural décroché au Rally Montecarlo.

In the game to play for victory against Thierry Neuville until the end of SS7, the quadruple world champion then encountered hydraulic problems on the WRC British, relegating him to almost 40″ at the end of the second stage.

Left without much hope of returning the Belgian leader of Hyundai in the longest SS (53 km) of the Tour de Corse yesterday morning, Ogier slowed down again due to technical problems.

“The morning was not fruitful, even if on the first half of the long special, everything was fine. Obviously we had no chance of catching Thierry, so we were riding at a good pace but nothing more.

Suddenly, halfway through the car started to lose boost and it was a bit difficult, but halfway through we were still going fast on the wide roads, so I didn't lose too much time.

But as soon as the road narrowed and hairpins presented themselves, I realized that the electronic problem we had, affected not only the boost, but also the center differential which was locked and this meant that we didn't have a handbrake for hairpins. We suffered a lot.

At the end of the stage we were behind Dani, but I wasn't really convinced that it would still work for the final stage. The only thing we could do at this point was change one of the electronic boxes we had in the car, but the team wasn't really convinced that this would solve the problem.

When we reset the car it worked for a bit but we weren't sure for how long. Fortunately, it worked well enough for the Power Stage. » De quoi revenir en deuxième position du classement général pour 1″3 face à la Hyundai i20 de Dani Sordo.

More work with M-Sport

Still leader of the championship after this fourth round of 2017, Sébastien Ogier recognizes that there is still a lot of work to be done in the M-Sport clan to achieve perfect reliability, as evidenced by the problems encountered by Elfyn Evans. The native of Gap appeared quite disappointed during the second day, not wishing to express himself at the arrival of an ES.

“This weekend, we were satisfied with the pace shown, comments the Frenchman. I think everything is going in the right direction. We had the speed to fight with Thierry. We were in the fight for victory, but there were a few too many technical problems for us this weekend, not only with our car, but also with the others.

This is definitely something the team needs to work very hard on. We don't want to feel that way again and be in that stressful situation again. »

Relive the best moments of the Tour de Corse on video, on our dedicated page, and discover the best photos of the event in our dedicated gallery.

Discover the full report and analysis of the Tour de Corse, produced by our special correspondents on the Isle of Beauty, in issue 2109 of AUTOhebdo, available this evening in digital version, and this Wednesday on newsstands.