MOTORSPORT: Citroen quits WRC as Ogier walks

Citroen has quit world rallying, blaming it on “the absence of a first-class driver available for 2020” after six-time world champion Sebastien Ogier walked out on his contract after just one season to join Toyota.

Ogier, whose streak of world titles was ended this year by Estonian Ott Tanak, is expected to be formally announced as Toyota’s new lead driver next Monday, with Welshman Elfyn Evans and 19-year-old Finn Kalle Rovanpera as his teammates.

Tanak was already known to be defecting from Toyota to this year’s champion manufacturer Hyundai next season before the 2019 WRC finale at Coffs Harbour, scheduled for last weekend, was cancelled because of the NSW bushfires.

Citroen’s exit, a year short of its pledge to remain until the end of 2020, leaves the top level of world rallying with only three manufacturers, the endlessly financially-strapped M-Sport Ford being the only rival to Hyundai and Toyota.

Ogier attributed his decision to leave Citroen and take up the seat vacated by Tanak to “the rhythm of development on the (Citroen C3) car and the speed the car was progressing, which was not enough”.

“There wasn’t enough development coming and we were down in performance against our competitors,” he has told Autosport.com.

Ogier, who started his WRC career with Citroen, won four world titles with Volkswagen in 2013-2016 and two more with M-Sport Ford in 2017-18 before returning to the French team.

He has said since his exit that Citroen saying there were no other top drivers available was “disrespectful for my colleagues in the sport”.

The WRC driver now out in the cold is Esapekka Lappi, the Finn who was Ogier’s Citroen teammate this year.
The best drive available to Lappi is in the M-Sport Ford Fiesta vacated by Evans.

While Hyundai has recruited Tanak, it has retained Belgian Thierry Neuville, who has been runner-up in the drivers’ championship the past four seasons.

Citroen CEO Linda Jackson said the French company had not wanted to leave the WRC so suddenly “but we could not imagine 2020 without Sebastien”.

“A part of Citroen’s DNA is intimately linked with the rally and we are proud to be one of the most titled brands in WRC history with 102 victories (79 of them by Sebastien Loeb) and eight manufacturer titles (all with Loeb as lead driver).”

The motorsport wing of Citroen’s parent company PSA has confirmed to Autosport that the marque will not be part of the WRC’s move to hybrids in 2022.

PSA recently committed to another of its brands, Peugeot, returning to sports car racing when hypercars are introduced to the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the broader World Endurance Championship.

The French conglomerate is already represented in the Formula E electric open-wheeler series through its premium brand DS.

DS is the reigning champion team – in partnership with China’s Techeetah – in Formula E, which begins its sixth season this week at Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Australia has never been part of FE, but the series has attracted many manufacturers, with Mercedes and Porsche joining the fray this season.

Fellow German makes Audi and BMW (in partnership with America’s Andretti Autosport) are already entrenched in FE.

Allan McNish, the Scottish sports car great who is Audi’s FE team principal, says that the addition of Mercedes and Porsche gives the series a feel of the Bundesliga – Germany’s premier soccer competition.

FE now has its biggest field – 12 teams, two more than Formula 1, and 24 cars and drivers compared to F1’s 20.

FE cars will have an extra 10kW of power under ‘attack mode’ this season, an increase from 225kW to 235kW.

The Mercedes drivers are Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne and Dutchman Nyck de Vries, while German Andre Lotterer has left DS Techeetah to be one of Porsche’s drivers, along with Switzerland’s Neel Jani.

Two-time series champion Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne is joined at DS Techeetah by Portugal’s Antonio Felix Da Costa.

New Zealander Brendon Hartley, who was part of Porsche’s last incarnation in prototype sports car racing along with Mark Webber and briefly an F1 driver with Red Bull’s Toro Rosso team, will make his FE debut with the Geox Dragon team founded by Roger Penske’s son Jay.

The 14-round series will run on five continents, with London returning to the calendar to this season and Seoul and Jakarta new venues.