One of the quirks of almost every World Rally Championship season for the past couple of decades is that the opening two or three rallies have been largely anomalous. The traditional season opener, the Monte Carlo Rally, is unique in the calendar as the only winter asphalt event, while what normally follows, a snow rally in Sweden or occasionally Norway, is unique for more obvious reasons. It means that even with the new season well under way, we often have little idea of the order of things until after round three or four.
Ogier proved fast but (finally) fallible in Sweden
We await the more familiar gravel of Mexico and Portugal before reaching any definitive conclusions about the relative competitiveness of each driver in 2014. But there were three lessons to take away from last week's 24-stage blast through the forests of Sweden, which resembled a full gravel rally rather than a snow event at times owing to some unseasonable weather.
The first and most significant of those is that reigning champion Sebastien Ogier is, in fact, fallible. The Frenchman had been unbeaten in the series since mid-September when, in Australia, he started a five-event winning streak. Although he was on course to add a sixth in Sweden as he held a narrow lead after seven stages, a rare mistake on the eighth cost him four and a half minutes and any prospect of adding a second Swedish victory to an overall career tally that already stands at 17, the same as Miki Biasion and one behind Hannu Mikkola.
Many commentators, myself included, had suggested that Ogier might just win every rally this season, so convinced are we that he simply operates on a different plane to his rivals. Although a small mistake and a snow bank denied him that feat, he did once again remind that us he is the very quickest rally driver in the world, regardless of surface, as he set 10 fastest stage times. Although Ogier won't win every rally this season, it does seem as though only he can deny himself victory on each of the 11 remaining rounds.
This is Latvala's chance to prove his mettle
The second lesson is that his Volkswagen team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala will very likely be his closest competitor this season. The Finn took control of the rally soon after Ogier's indiscretion and drove maturely to win in Sweden for the third time (ahead of Norwegians Andreas Mikkelsen in second and Mads Ostberg in third). He also scored two points on the Power Stage and now sits atop the championship table, five points clear of Ogier on 40.
This should be a pivotal year for the vastly experienced 28-year-old. Latvala is yet to deliver on the remarkable promise he showed early in his career. When he became the youngest ever WRC rally winner aged just 22 back in 2008, it seemed certain that the flood gates would open and he'd quickly rack up rally victories and very soon his first title, too. In the five seasons that followed, however, he triumphed just seven more times. Meanwhile, Ogier emerged and very rapidly displaced him as the next big thing in rallying.
Latvala's pace has never been in doubt - legendary rally car designer Christian Loriaux considers him the fastest driver he has ever seen - but all too rare are those occasions that the Finn leaves the requisite 400km or so between monster crash or silly error. While that was forgivable in the season or two after he first became a rally winner, for the past handful of seasons it has become desperately frustrating, not least for M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson, who invested so heavily in Latvala over several seasons only for his young charge to depart for a rival team at the end of 2012.
Hyundai's luck changed - a bit - for Sweden
This is the year, then, that Latvala needs to prove his ability to win regularly, to iron out those mistakes that have defined his career thus far, and to mount a genuine title challenge. If in 2014 he doesn't have what it takes to run Ogier down to the wire one will begin to feel that he'll never have what it takes. He has, after all, the right car, the experience with it and now a five-point lead in the standings.
The third lesson to be taken from Rally Sweden is the impressive competitive potential of Hyundai's i20 WRC. As noted earlier this rally is anomalous so we shouldn't read too much into the car's performance, but on just its second outing it came within half a second of scoring a first fastest stage time with lead driver Thierry Neuville at the wheel. Both the Belgian and part-time team-mate Juho Hanninen, despite each making errors that cost them points-paying results, proved on several occasions that the i20 is fundamentally made of the right stuff. We know the team is yet to find the last few horsepower from the 1.6-litre turbo engine and that the chassis requires further fine tuning, but to run comparably with the Polo, M-Sport's Fiesta and Citroen's DS3 at times is very encouraging indeed.
So that's what we learned about the WRC in 2014 during Rally Sweden. By the time the series reaches the gravel stages of Mexico it could all prove to be utterly irrelevant...
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