Vincent Landais admits that his decision to leave Pierre-Louis Loubet and to join Sebastien Ogier was difficult for him and says that the work with the last one is very easy for him.
Landais decided to part ways with Loubet at the end of 2022 as Ogier offered to the first one a ride with the Toyota GR Yaris Rally at last year's Rally Japan. The eight-time WRC Champion was satisfied by Landais' skills and decided to continue with him in 2023. Their second outing was at Rallye Monte Carlo one month ago where Ogier won for ninth time this rally and overtook Sebastien Loeb at Monte victories while Landais finished at the top of the podium for the first time in his career. Their next event for 2023 season will be Rally Mexico which will be held on 16-19 March.
"Of course, it wasn’t easy because Pierre-Louis has been my friend for so many years", Landais said.
"But then in this kind of world, at this kind of level of sport, you can’t always think about friendship.
"Séb has been my idol from the beginning so from that side then I couldn’t say no, of course.
"And also because I want to learn a lot and I need this kind of driver to help me be even better than before.
"So it was a huge opportunity for me to become another co-driver and become even better than before, and to learn a lot.
"I was dealing with everything in my mind like this and then said ‘what should I do’ and then took this decision.
"But to be honest in the end I took it quite easily and quickly because this kind of opportunity you know that it will only happen once, so I didn’t want to miss it.
"Then it was quite easy for me to decide that I want to be with my idol in the car".
Finally, he is referring how it is like to work with Ogier: "It’s very special because he is different to Pierre-Louis, for sure, because he has much more experience and he is not the same kind of driver.
"Just sitting alongside him, just observing and watching him working, it’s a lot of new things for me, new habits I have to change from what I did for seven years now.
"So at the moment I am just observing a lot and learning a lot for sure.
"It’s so different to what I did before, I would say in the car I don’t have the same job.
"With Pierre-Louis I was helping him with a lot of things to be honest and now it feels like this kind of driver, he doesn’t need any help other than just my job as a co-driver.
"Of course, they like when you push them a bit to get motivated, but at the moment I just feel like I am observing a lot – watching and learning".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Toyota
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