The Latest Breaking News from Sébastien Ogier

The Toyota driver challenged for a record-extending 10th Monte Carlo win before ultimately losing a gripping head-to-head to Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville by a margin of 16.1 seconds. The second-place finish marked his 13th podium in 15 Monte Carlo event starts.

Neuville set a blistering pace across the morning’s two stages, winning them both to extend his lead over Toyota’s Ogier to 13.5 seconds, with only the Power Stage remaining on Sunday afternoon.

The WRC has introduced a new points structure this year which is designed to spice up rallies particularly on the Sunday, where drivers have previously cruised through the final day preserving tyres for the end of rally Power Stage.

Misted-up windscreens were a hot topic last Friday as extreme wet weather hit the stages. The issue afflicted the prototype spaceframe-built Rally1 cars much more severely than Rally2 machines derived from production-based models.   

The reigning WRC constructors' champion has announced new contracts with Rovanpera, Elfyn Evans, Sebastien Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta following Toyota's dominant 1-2-3 at last weekend's season finale in Japan. Rovanpera, Evans and Ogier each scored three wins this year to help Toyota to a sixth world title.

The reigning WRC constructors’ champions have announced new contracts with Rovanpera, Elfyn Evans, Sebastien Ogier and Takamoto Katsuta following Toyota’s dominant 1-2-3 at last weekend’s season finale in Japan. Rovanpera, Evans and Ogier each scored three wins this year to help Toyota to a sixth world title.

Evans delivered an impressive display to overcome extreme wet conditions, and even snow showers, to lead home eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier by 1m17.7s.

Neuville had closed to within 10.5s of Evans heading into stage six but his rally came to a premature halt 100 metres into the stage.

The Hyundai driver emerged from a dramatic Saturday with a 26.2s lead over Rovanpera, having started the day 36.4s adrift of the Finn.