“I’m glad for the opportunity to discover a new world.”
Asked what specifically attracted him to the formidable task, Ogier speaks in terms which many of us can understand.
“I have a need for speed,” he says. “It’s all about adrenaline that you get from the cockpit.
“Here on track [at Le Mans] you might go faster and faster but actually, with rallying, the environment you’re racing in is so much closer. It means you have a feeling of speed even higher most of the time [than in sports cars].
“But more than that, I think where we get the pleasure is going faster and making the best of what you have. You can drive tracks like Le Mans at more than 200mph and it seems fast, but it’s not enough.
“Making the best of the new car you have and being at a point where you feel that you are on the limit and that you cannot do more, that’s where you get the sensation of pleasure.”
It hasn’t been plain sailing to that point of driving pleasure. Though the team has achieved solid results in both Sebring and Spa-Francorchamps, the first two rounds of this year’s WEC, Ogier has struggled at times to get on top of the Oreca-Gibson prototype.
Thrashing round a Yaris WRC car is not quite the same as getting a prototype hooked up through the Porsche Curves — he explains the difference.
“I basically feel that I need to learn almost from zero again,” he says.
“Being too aggressive is something I had to work on in the beginning”
“Although I have a good capacity for adaptation – one of the big strengths of rally drivers – there’s definitely work to be done. It’s a different driving style and you see the car behave completely differently.
“Being too aggressive is something I had to work on in the beginning. I kind of expected too much maybe from the car and was trying to push it too hard.”
That main area comes in crucial point of contact for any cars with the road – tyres. Ogier was known in rallying for his elite ability to look after WRC rubber, but has found doing the same in WEC not quite so easy.
“It’s always been my strength, to manage the tyre whilst still being fast, but still quite smooth and looking after the car mechanically as well.
“It was a little bit the opposite here [in WEC] where I struggled a little bit to not over-stress the tyres.