Opinion: Rally stars in road accidents? It even happens to the best
Ogier put crash behind him to win for Toyota in Croatia
Sébastien Ogier is far from the first WRC driver to clash with road traffic
Rally stars are essentially driving gods, so it’s rather reassuring when they get involved in banal road accidents, like Zeus coming down from Mount Olympus.
Sébastien Ogier reminded us of that when he had a coming together with a BMW at a bus-stop in Croatia – before winning the rally a few hours later.
This wasn’t the first time that WRC victory was rescued from the jaws of road traffic disaster. Henri Toivonen was leading the 1986 Monte Carlo Rally when he met a Ford Taunus head-on during a road section near Aubenas, sustaining the sort of damage that makes Ogier’s (pictured above) look like a carpark ding.
Back then, service crews could intervene at any point, and Lancia’s mechanics performed a miracle to cobble the Delta S4 back together again, despite a chassis that was irreversibly bent.
The rest was achieved by Toivonen himself, as he not only covered the remaining 31-mile road section fast enough to cancel out the 40 minutes that had been taken up in repairs – just think about that for a moment – but also was quick enough on the following stage to hang onto his overall lead. That was despite him not having had enough time to even change tyres.
Similarly, Colin McRae was on course for his first WRC win on the 1992 RAC Rally when he collided with a spectator’s car in Grizedale Forest. From there things unravelled, and he eventually brought his battered Subaru Legacy home in sixth.
Britain’s round of the world championship actually has an unfortunate history of road-traffic collisions. Armin Schwarz remembers being wiped out by an old lady at a T-junction in 1989, despite the fact that he was driving an Audi 200 Quattro – surely the most barge-like rally car ever made.
Sébastien Loeb also enjoyed the surreal experience of being crowned world champion on the 2011 Rally GB despite having been eliminated near Llandovery by a hire car driven by a Spanish spectator who had forgotten which side of the road we keep to.
Three years earlier, Loeb took crashing on a road section to a whole new level by colliding with a fellow competitor on the Jordan Rally – embarrassingly, another Citroën. As he was heading out of a stage, he met Conrad Rautenbach heading towards it – and the inevitable happened.
And therein lies the irony. The better a driver you are on the stages, the more vulnerable you perhaps become to mishaps in everyday motoring. There’s a lot to be said for a lack of talent.
*READ MORE*
*WRC: Croatia Rally goes down to the wire *
*Season preview: 2021 World Rally Championship *
*UK loses World Rally Championship calendar spot for 2021*