Facing delays and the possibility of missing recce, Ott Tänak and Sébastien Ogier had to find a Plan B for Paraguay
Photography by Toyota
Words by David Evans, DirtFish Head of Media
World Rally champions Sébastien Ogier and Ott Tänak arrived in Encarnación with just hours to spare before the start of Tuesday’s recce for Rally del Paraguay, following disruption to their travel plans.
They were scheduled to fly out of Frankfurt on Sunday, arriving a day ahead of the recce for this week’s World Rally Championship qualifier. When their original flight was cancelled, they were forced to fly a day later, completing the journey by private jet from Buenos Aires and arriving into the hotel in the early hours of Tuesday.
Ogier, who was joined by co-driver Vincent Landais on the journey, told DirtFish: “I always fly last minute because, like everybody knows, I want to optimize time at home with my family. We had a bit of a delay, but still we managed it on time and we arrived here just before the recce, so maybe I actually made the perfect plan!
“The jet lag is not so bad here, so it’s OK. The preparations are good. From what we’ve seen so far, this one is going to be a challenge for sure. Watching some videos before coming here, it looked like a bit of a boring rally with a lot of straights and junctions. Still some sections are a bit like this, but actually there’s still a lot of difficulties and I think more in the vertical – we have to estimate all of these bumps, how can we take them, which speed and which approach.”
The two world champions had to take a private jet to make the start of recce on Tuesday
Tänak added: “There was some hiccups with the flights, but I guess it happens when you’re travelling. When we got here, everything was well organized [by the team] and we had enough sleep before the recce. The roads look really interesting and clearly quite unique.”
The Toyota and Hyundai drivers weren’t the only ones to struggle with the cancelled flight out of Germany; world-renowned photographer Jaanus Ree was forced to take a bus ride through Argentina to complete his trip to Paraguay.
Words:David Evans
Tags: Ott Tanak, Rally Paraguay, Rally Paraguay 2025, Sébastien Ogier, WRC 2025
Publish Date August 27, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/08/bHH94w3G-Ogier07GRE25mj324-780x520.jpg August 27, 2025
Up Next
