I must say I was sorry to wake up on Sunday morning to see that Elfyn Evans had slid off the road in Monza and thrown away the World Rally Championship.
Not that I begrudge Sebastien Ogier an incredible seventh world title, far from it.
But I was kinda hoping that for just the second time in 17-years, a guy who wasn’t called Sebastien would be world champion.
Regardless of that, in my mind it makes Ogier the greatest driver of the modern era and will leave Evans with a knot in his gut that he’ll be determined to remove come next season.
His mistake at Rally Monza, where he slid off the road in treacherously slippery conditions, shouldn’t be seen as a massive blunder that cost him the title. More likely, it will be looked upon as simply bad luck.
The wrong place at the wrong time, on the wrong tyres. Even after he slowed Ogier down soon after, the Frenchman barely stayed on the road.
So it begs the question about the suitability of Rally Monza and the conditions that the rally ran in, and whether the FIA and the WRC did enough to make it a fair fight.
Clearly the COVID-affected 2020 season threw the championship into a spin, and Monza wasn’t even on the original schedule, let alone with an early-winter December date.
Yet with treacherous weather, torrential rain, snow and fog, the question must be asked as to whether the rally produced a fair fight for the WRC, or whether blind luck was at play?
I didn’t mind the format of the Monza Rally. Part rally, part gymkhana, part circuit race, it pretty much had everything for the viewer.
Switching from tarmac to gravel (or mud) on the same stage produced great action, but when snow and ice was thrown into the mix, it really became a lottery.
Evans wasn’t the only driver to come unstuck either. Gus Greensmith wrecked his Fiesta World Rally Car after what appeared to be a blameless accident, and then Ole-Christian Veiby did the same thing in his Hyundai a few minutes later.
Others had lucky escapes that could quite easily have ended their rally there and end – such as Ogier, when he slid wide and slammed his Yaris into a steel post on the rally’s opening stage.
Evans will be looking back and wondering why he didn’t have such good fortune.
He won’t have much time to think about it though, as the new season is set to get underway in just six weeks time in Monte Carlo – COVID willing.
As winter takes its grip on Europe over the coming weeks, we wait with bated breath to see if the 2021 WRC season starts as planned, or whether we’re in for another truncated season.
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