WARSAW, Poland — Eight-time world rally champion Sébastien Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais were hospitalized after a crash in Poland on Tuesday while preparing for this week’s race.
Ogier’s Toyota Gazoo Racing team said in a statement the French crew was “involved in a road accident during reconnaissance for Rally Poland and have been taken for medical checks.”
A police spokesman in Olsztyn, Tomasz Markowski, said a Toyota and Ford cars were involved near the northeast village of Wlosty, and four people were taken to hospital. The drivers were airlifted to hospital and the passengers were taken by ambulances, Markowski added.
Local police spokeswoman Marta Domańska said the crash occurred on a narrow, one-lane dirt road which was not closed to traffic. In the Ford were a 69-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman. She said no official rally route tests were taking place there at the time.
Police officers are investigating the site of a crash between the white Toyota of eight-time world rally champion Sebastien Ogier and co-driver Vincent Landais, right, and local residents’ Ford, left, that collided head-on on a local road near the village of Wlosty, near Goldap in northeastern Poland, Tuesday, June 25, 2024, while the Ogier and Landais were on a reconnaissance run ahead of this week’s Rally Poland. (Police Office in Goldap via AP Photo)
TV footage showed an ambulance helicopter in a field and police and firefighters at the site, and photos posted by Olsztyn police showed a white Toyota and a dark Ford with their fronts damaged.
The four-day Rally Poland is due to start on Thursday in a rural area not far from the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.
The 40-year-old Ogier is one of the greatest rally drivers in history. He won six straight world titles from 2013-18. His most recent was in 2021.
Ogier has won 60 rally races, second all-time to countryman Sebastien Loeb with 80.
Driving part-time in the world rally championship this year, he won the Croatia Rally in April and the Portugal Rally in May. Poland is hosting its first WRC event in seven years, and Ogier has won here twice.