Citroen prepares to reveal all…

15th November 2011

Citroen has summoned the media to an 'end of season press conference' in its Versailles factory on Wednesday afternoon. But all the signs are that this will be about rather more than celebrating yet another title sweep for itself and Sebastien Loeb...

The media gathering is expected to see the announcement of at least one half of the driver swap deal that has been the talk of the service park since it became clear that the factory Citroen squad simply wasn't big enough for two Sebastiens. If Loeb was heading for the exit (whether that door led to retirement, a VW or a circuit racing career) Sebastien Ogier would be ready to step up and become Citroen's latest homegrown winning machine. But Loeb's going nowhere. And that would be fine, if Ogier was willing to accept that the eight-time champion is team leader and priority. But Ogier doesn't fancy that.

It's the situation the McLaren Formula 1 team faced at the end of its tumultuous 2007 season. What do you do when you've got two remarkable drivers who simply cannot share a garage/service area without ripping the team apart? The answer: you keep the more congenial one who you've also known the longest, let the higher-maintenance one take themselves elsewhere, and bring in an amenable Finn.

The rumours of an Ogier/Mikko Hirvonen swap deal first surfaced a few rounds from the end of the season. With Ogier firmly contracted to the red team through 2012, it seemed implausible. But the more you looked at it, so did the possibility of Ogier and Loeb sharing an awning any longer.

There was no official confirmation in Wales, but there was a lot of finality in Ogier and Hirvonen's remarks about their current situations, and a few unguarded comments from other drivers accidentally talking as if Ogier was already in white-and-blue and Hirvonen already in red. The surprise now would not be if the exchange took place, but if it didn't.

Should all this come to pass, it makes 2012 even more intriguing. The Ogier out/Hirvonen in shuffle instantly reduces Citroen's intra-team antipathy levels, but it's not as if the French squad is opting for someone who will guarantee Dani Sordo levels of dutiful supportiveness. It may have been a while since Hirvonen consistently delivered his finest form, but he's still run Loeb close for two championships in three years, and won't be keen to take too many penalties to help the man who's been his nemesis throughout his stint as Ford's number one.

Assuming Ford rubber-stamps the continuation of its World Rally programme, in Ogier and Jari-Matti Latvala it will have a dynamite line-up in more ways the one. Two men with sufficiently blistering pace that they could be the one to finally end the Loeb title streak, and both also getting closer to rounding off the rough edges that have so far prevented them from doing so. One who will feel that after four years of backing their previous team-mate, and having won the season finale, they're ready to lead the team's 2012 title charge. The other switching teams purely because they didn't want to be subordinate to an incumbent team-mate...

Perhaps, of course, Citroen's invitation will just be a chance to hear Loeb, Daniel Elena and Olivier Quesnel reflect on their 2011 successes while enjoying some champagne and party snacks... But probably not...