Skip to main content

Julien Ingrassia Talks About His Journey to the Top of the WRC

Perhaps the least understood and most car-sickness-inducing role in rallying is co-driving. To get a better handle on what it takes to become the best team in rallying, Volkswagen Motorsport recently spoke to the guy who’s been getting reigning-world-champion Sebastien Ogier to the top of the podium since 2006.

Unfortunately, the interview is written in German, and the translation is… mostly intelligible at best, so here’s the gist.

Ingrassia got into motorsports pretty late in life. Up until the age of 16, he had no particular interest in rallying, but then he got his license and that changed.

Luckily, when he became interested, he had an outlet. He followed a friend who rallied around France, but didn’t drive for him until, in 2002, when the friend’s second rally car needed a co-driver and he asked Ingrassia to give it a shot.

886x498px_vw-20160124-2825

“I replied that I had no experience and that it was a pretty difficult rally,” says Ingrassia. “But he then said that the driver was also not very experienced and just wanted to get to the finish. I will never forget the adrenaline rush. It was a real adventure.”

To add to that, he and his driver got to the finish without an accident and he was hooked.

After that he co-drove for a friend of his in France’s national rally championship and together they had moderate success.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to live off, so he worked in sales at Coca Cola. It was while working there, on a quiet day, that he first saw Sebastien Ogier racing in the Federation Francaise de Sport Automobile talent competition.

“This striking driver had a damn brave driving style,” says Ingrassia. “I immediately saw that he drove very aggressively, but not stupidly. He was intelligent.” So Ingrassia sent Peugeot Motorsport (with whom Ogier was driving) an application.

886x498px_vw-20160124-2827

Peugeot responded, gave him Ogier’s phone number, and the two met up at the Ogier family home in the winter of 2006.

“It was a bit like a date,” says Ingrassia. It was snowy out and they had dinner, and when they were supposed to head out to a local bar, Ingrassia spotted the Ogiers’ Renault 11 Turbo with studded tires. They never made it to the bar. Instead they played in the snow all night.

The rest, as they say, is history. The team are now the dominant pair in rallying and despite spending his life in a race car, Ingrassia says he has no desire to race professionally, though he does enjoy a spirited drive.

You can catch Ingrassia and Ogier next, at the Rally Italia Sardegna, starting next week.

The post Julien Ingrassia Talks About His Journey to the Top of the WRC appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex http://ift.tt/1XlpJTq
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster Review

“Supercars just don’t excite me anymore.” These words, spoken to me over a month ago by another journalist, friend, and (so-called) enthusiast were echoing in my head for far too long, but they’ve finally been drowned out. Drowned out by the wail of a naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12 engine mounted in the middle of the new Lamborghini Aventador S Roadster. My friend’s point is that back in the good old days, there was a crop of supercars that captured the imagination with amazing style, sounds, performance, and more. Today, it seems like everything is capable of supercar performance, with large luxury sedans outdoing some of the best and most dedicated teams of car nuts, while former pillars of automotive excellence are suddenly pumping out family-friendly SUVs. Beyond that, another league of supercars, dubbed hypercars have cropped up with hybrid gas-electric powertrains that make magical things happen quickly, but at the cost of the acoustic drama, visual flair, and engag...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project SportWagen: Going Stage 2 with APR

    When we last left you, the humble little SportWagen was fresh from the development process with our friends at AWE Tuning, sporting a new downpipe, exhaust and intake, allowing things to breathe a bit easier.  The car sounded great, but there was no getting around the fact that our wagon was still quite, well, slow.   While we realize that nothing we do to the Golf SportWagen at this point will make it a race car, we still felt compelled to do something .  To put it bluntly, we had a fever, and the only cure was more power. Flash forward a few hours, and we found ourselves at Waterfest, staring down APR’s palatial spread and the numerous tuned vehicles surrounding it.  Earlier in the year, APR had hinted to us that their 1.8 TSI files would be quite impressive, and based on what they were able to do with the 2.0 TSI found in the new GTI and our time in their Golf R, we knew it’d be worth the wait.  So with this in mind, we lined our G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Project Golf SportWagen- Intro

I’ve never really been one for SUVs and crossovers.  The current offerings aren’t the body-on-frame, go-anywhere specialty tools I remember from my youth, and what they lack in capability, they also lack in on-road performance. The current crop isn’t terribly good at handling or being efficient, which in my opinion are major components of our ideal driving experience.  So when it comes to space or utility, I usually look for something of the wagon variety- and it seems that I’m not alone. We hit quite a few shows around the east coast each summer, and we see modified Jetta SportWagens at nearly every event. Even amongst common consumers, these cars are highly sought-after. They don’t depreciate much, making even early Mk 5 2.5 versions expensive in comparison to other Jettas or Golfs of the same vintage. This year, Volkswagen launched their latest SportWagen, which is now billed as a Golf.  In many ways, this latest SportWagen is the best yet and it has certai...
Post a Comment
Read more