Sébastien Ogier (Toyota) won the Catalonia Rally this Sunday, October 23, his 55th victory in the World Rally Championship (WRC), one round from the end of a season whose champion is already known, the young Finn Kalle Rovanpera.
Ogier, eight times world champion between 2013 and 2021, was content with a few events this season. He finished the rally 16.4 seconds ahead of Belgian Thierry Neuville (Hyundai) and 34.5 seconds ahead of Rovanperä, his world-class successor and team-mate at Toyota.
As in the heyday of his eight coronations in nine years, between 2013 and 2021, Ogier, 38, dominated all weekend on the asphalt roads of Catalonia, winning his 4th rally in Spain at the end.
He signed a total of eight best times in the special stages, including that of the final Power Stage (SS19), with five bonus points at the key, for panache. Rovanperä, already assured of his coronation, at 22, never sought this weekend to threaten one of the two supreme references of the WRC, with Sébastien Loeb.
By winning in Salou, Ogier therefore did as well as Loeb, a freelancer like him in the WRC, who had managed to win in Monte-Carlo at the end of January, in a Ford. With a new teammate, Isabelle Galmiche, in the seat formerly reserved for Daniel Elena.
For Ogier too, this 55th victory is the first with a new occupant in the right-hand seat: Benjamin Veillas, who replaced Julien Ingrassia this year. But he remains at a distance from Loeb (80 victories) in the annals. Rovanperä, which has dominated all season, is already sure of its title since the rally in New Zealand. He became, at 22, the youngest world champion in the history of the World Rally, 50 years after its creation. He succeeds Ogier and Toyota does the double by also pocketing the constructors’ world title, thanks to his group shot in Catalonia, without waiting for the end of the season at the Japan rally (10-13 November). On the lands of the Japanese manufacturer.