{"id":449315,"date":"2026-05-28T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/449315\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T11:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T11:00:09","slug":"ogier-lays-down-marker-in-rally-japan-shakedown-dirtfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/449315\/","title":{"rendered":"Ogier lays down marker in Rally Japan shakedown \u2013 DirtFish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>S\u00e9bastien Ogier was the standout of the World Rally Championship field during shakedown for Rally Japan, clocking a fastest time one second faster than anyone else.<\/p>\n<p>The reigning world champion had looked set for victory at the previous round in Portugal until a penultimate-stage puncture; he also won the most recent asphalt round of the championship, Rally Islas Canarias.<\/p>\n<p>Rally Japan\u2019s Thursday morning warmup was more of the same, with Ogier immediately 0.6s up on Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans on the first pass. By the second he\u2019d extended that gap to a whole second.<\/p>\n<p>Ogier\u2019s assessment was brief and to the point, highlighting that his previous trip to Japan had led to victory: \u201cThe only thing that matters is I want the same result and I am here for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Evans has won in Japan twice, taking back-to-back victories in 2023 and 2024; he was firmly the best of the rest behind Ogier on shakedown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"S\u00e9bastien Ogier was the standout of the World Rally Championship field during shakedown for Rally Japan, clocking a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,87697,228869,87699,213,1733,139135],"class_list":["post-449315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rally-japan","tag-rally-japan-2026","tag-sebastien-ogier","tag-sports","tag-toyota","tag-wrc-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}