Julien Ingrassia was at home on Saturday evening when his phone lit up. Seb.
Four days later the eight-time world championship-winning co-driver was strapped into a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 alongside Sebastien Ogier at Secto Rally Finland, back in a WRC seat for the first time since the pair walked away as champions at the end of 2021. Ogier's regular co-driver Vincent Landais is unavailable for the 75th running of the event, and Ogier went straight to the man he won eight titles with.
Ingrassia had one hour to decide.
"I did not ignore him when he called me... he was lucky I was not partying," Ingrassia told DirtFish. "It was close."
He was careful to frame the comeback properly before saying anything else about it.
"We have to remember that if I'm here, it's because something has gone wrong by Vincent's side and all of our thoughts are with him," he said. "OK, we are here. We have a mission to accomplish and, to get the phone call on Saturday night around 7pm and then take the decision within one hour and be in the plane the next day, after five years, almost 2000 days without co-driving in the WRC... I was not fully comfortable if I'm honest.
"Once we were into the action, we made some test on Monday morning, the DNA is speaking again. We will do the job."
The pair ran at Toyota's test site on Monday. Ingrassia, who by his own admission prepares everything in advance, has had to do the opposite this week: the pace notes he handed to Landais last September were retrieved and reviewed on the plane, and he borrowed a stopwatch from Scott Martin, Elfyn Evans' co-driver, because he no longer had his own working set-up. He told French outlet AutoHebdo that the improvised nature of it all was the real test, and that he intended to prove to plenty of people that he could improvise as well as prepare.
The first question Ogier asked him on that Saturday call was not about pace notes.
"The first question Seb asked me: 'What is your weight?'" Ingrassia said, with Ogier cutting in: "He said it was exactly the same as before."
Ingrassia: "I weigh myself one hour after he called me and I sent [the result] to the engineer."
Ogier's own verdict on the emergency call-up was blunt relief. He told AutoHebdo the team could not have dreamed of a better replacement, that Julien's return five years on was undoubtedly a challenge for his co-driver but one he was convinced he would meet, and that the only real cost was a more stressful build-up than usual. He also admitted there was something sad about the circumstances that had made it possible — and something genuinely nice about seeing Ingrassia back in his overalls.
Finland is not a gentle place to make that kind of return. Ingrassia described stages that felt extraordinarily fast and demanding, the current cars offering no let-up, the pace rarely dropping below 80km/h and often sitting close to 200km/h.
Ogier and Ingrassia are not the only familiar pairing back at Jyvaskyla. Kalle Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen, who won this rally 12 months ago in a factory Rally1 Yaris in their final WRC season, took Halttunen's rear-wheel-drive Toyota Corolla GT AE86 through the Harju stage on Thursday, with Rovanpera driving and Halttunen taking the wheel for a repeat run on Friday.
"Kalle Rovanpera and Jonne Halttunen are returning to the legendary Harju Stage!" the event's statement read. "They'll take Jonne's Toyota Corolla GT AE86 through the stage on both Thursday and Friday."
For Rovanpera the demo is another small step back. The two-time champion's move to circuit racing stalled when a balance disorder — benign paroxysmal positional vertigo — forced him to shelve plans for a Super Formula campaign in Japan. Toyota confirmed last month that he had resumed physical training and was planning a phased return to driving, with competitive racing in 2027 the target.
"Obviously now I'm declared fit again to drive so that is nice and I'm slowly getting back to everything. I don't know what the next plans are, but something interesting for sure," Rovanpera said at Rally Estonia, where he made a flying visit while on holiday. "The wintertime was busy and we did a lot of driving and many interesting things but it was unfortunate that it ended how it ended, but let's see what comes next."
Two anniversary-edition cameos, then, and one of them scoring championship points. Ogier still wants to win this rally. Ingrassia has four days of preparation and 13 years of muscle memory to do it with.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/ingrassias-shock-wrc-return-one-hour-to-say-yes-to-ogier). Visit for full coverage.*