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Can Citroen recapture their past glories with Ogier?

Can Sebastien Ogier return glory to Citroen?
Roar Guru
28th September, 2018
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Once the dominant force in the World Rally Championship with Sebastien Loeb from 2004 to 2012, the past six years have been comparatively barren for Citroen.

Despite the Satory-based team capturing several individual rally victories over the past six years, challenging for the drivers championship has proved an insurmountable task.

The intervening years since Loeb’s retirement from full-time participation in the WRC have not been kind to the Citroen World Rally Team. With the acrimonious breakdown in relationship between Citroen and protege Sebastien Ogier over the course of the 2011 season in hindsight proving a costly mistake. Just how differently would the French team’s WRC campaigns have unfolded with Ogier behind the wheel?

While lead driver Kris Meeke often had the pace to battle with the other major contenders, powering Citroen to several rally victories, consistency was sorely missing over the Briton’s almost four-year stint, leading Citroen to eventually drop Meeke from their 2018 season driver’s roster earlier this year for ‘safety’ reasons after a stunning crash at Rally de Portugal.

So the recent announcement of a two-year deal between Citroen and Sebastien Ogier will allow the French manufacturer to put that lingering question to the test. Returning to the French team as a multiple WRC winner after seven seasons at Volkswagen Motorsport and M-Sport Ford, there is little question that Ogier has the ability to bring glory back to Citroen.

The deciding factor and principal question that will be on everyone’s lips heading into the 2019 season will be over Citroen’s ability to deliver Ogier a competitive rally car.

Based on the 2018 season, the French team will be facing an uphill battle to develop the DS3 into a car capable of overhauling the Toyota Yaris, Hyundai i20 Coupe and Ford Fiesta. While capable of finishing on the podium, the DS3 has a reputation for being difficult to drive on the edge compared to its competition, making it harder for drivers to extract maximum performance.

Heading into what will reportedly be Ogier’s last full-time WRC contract, no doubt the Frenchman will have sought out guarantees that significant investment will be poured into development of the DS3 over the course of the 2019 and 2020 seasons, something M-Sport Ford were reportedly unwilling or unable to provide during negotiations for Ogier’s potential re-signing.

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It’s an understandable assurance for Ogier to seek given just how tight the 2018 WRC season has become, with the championship currently a close three-way fight between Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville, Toyota’s Ott Tanak, and M-Sport Ford’s Sebastien Ogier. Car reliability and performance could conceivably be a major deciding factor come the 2019 WRC season.

The pressure will be on Citroen to hit the ground running, with Ogier aiming to become just the second person to win the WRC with three different teams, a feat accomplished by only Juha Kankkunen so far.

However, if Citroen invest sufficiently in developing the DS3 over the 2019 and 2020 WRC seasons, there is little reason to think the French manufacturer and Ogier cannot bring the glory days back to Satory.

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