Hi, friends!
I saw so many onboard rally videos through the two and half decades of following this sport but I don't remember when was the last time that saw this kind of commitment as I saw last weekend from five times World Rally Champion Sebastien Ogier.
Wales Rally is a gravel event as you probably know. To be more precise it's probably the only mud event of the calendar because the forest of Wales have been drowned for every WRC occasion through the last 25 years that I follow this rally. The first time that I watched the coverage of this rally day by day was in 1993 and that was the first ever WRC rally I really followed day by day.
I started to record VHS tapes from the 1992 season and I was really addicted to the rallying back then.
I saw from 1993 edition of Network Q Rally GB (that was the name of Wales Rally back then) that there are some tarmac special stages in the rally but that stages were driven at Silverstone circuit and I remember Colin McRae cutting the grass between the corners. It was wild for the youngster as I was and Colin was my favorite driver. All the kids from the block knew about Colin and today nobody knows about WRC drivers of today.
That's the problem of the sport. World Rally Championship isn't that popular as it was and except hard core fans as I am, people don't know much what's going on these days. But I hope it is getting better. There's else my blog around that we can find some new fans of this adrenaline sport.
Back to Seb Ogier... He is back in the game after he won Wales Rally last weekend. He had two top drivers in front of him before the rally even started and his Ford Fiesta WRC is without evolution from the Monte Carlo Rallye started in January. Yeah, M-Sport Ford is a semi-private team and there's no full or bigger support from the Ford factory and without funds, there's no progress and development in motorsport.
All the other teams have really strong budgets (except maybe Citroen but only until this season; they signed Ogier for the next season) and they can afford a development of engine, transmission and all the other parts of the car. That is the main problem of M-Sport Ford team. That's why Ogier goes to Citroen for 2019.
The thing that I can see from this onboard video is the strenght of the Michelin tires. Ogier is cutting the corners, cutting the curbs and the tires are still on the rim, they are extremely strong on the sides with the top grip. And we are talking about gravel tires. Yeah, they are not allowed to drive on rally slicks on the gravel rally. I would say that Michelin and Pirelli are making the best tires on the rally market. There are some other brands like DMACK but they left the series at the end of the 2017 season.
You can also see from the video that it is the 'rock and a hard place' from both sides of the road and the sea is maybe 50 meters below the road. So if you went off the road here, you can go swimming, but with your rally car this time.
Ogier is super quick here, his speed was around 190km/h on some places and the road is where you normally go around 60km/h. That's why he is the five times WRC champion. We can really learn from this video.
The other thing that I really liked on this video is the camera angle which is all around the driver and I like it the most when it is behind the driver that you can see what driver is doing, his driving technique. That's how we can learn the most about driving. That's how I learn beside my driving.
The name of the special stage is Great Orme Llandudno 1 which is long around 8kms. We should add perfect work from Ogier's co-driver Julian Ingrassia. Congratulations to both of them!
Thanks for photos and video to WRC.com and Youtube.
Enjoy! :)
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