Esteban Ocon Gives a Tour of His Road-Legal Rally Car Tuned by 8x World Champion Sebastien Ogier

Esteban Ocon (L) and Sebastian Ogier (R)

Haas F1 driver, Esteban Ocon has jumped onto the bandwagon of drivers starting their own YouTube channels. The Frenchman tried vlogging recently, but has been utilizing the video-sharing platform to mainly show off his exquisite car collection.

The 2021 Hungarian GP winner has now added yet another rare piece of automotive engineering to his ever-growing garage and promptly recorded a vlog to share it with his fanbase on YouTube.

Late last season, the Kannapolis-based team announced a technical partnership with Toyota Gazoo Racing—the motorsport division of the Japanese automobile giants. Naturally, this collaboration also means that the team’s drivers, Ocon and Oliver Bearman get some privileges, including bespoke ‘company’ cars.

The latest addition to Ocon‘s garage is the 2025 Toyota GR Yaris Gen 2 ‘Ogier Edition’—named after eight-time World Rally Championship winner, Sebastien Ogier. In addition to the car—which is limited to only 200 units—each owner also gets a part from Ogier’s actual WRC machinery.

The 28-year-old showed off his keychain that had what seemed like a pretty worn-out nut from Ogier’s WRC car embedded into it.

In addition to the Ogier edition, Toyota is also offering a bespoke Kalle Rovanpera edition, too.

What makes this car so special is the fact that it has been tuned by Ogier himself. However, Ocon also revealed why the Yaris itself is such a lucrative offering. As it turns out, owing to the FIA’s WRC homologation rules, all WRC manufacturers must first make a road-legal version of the cars they want to enter into the championship.

Therefore, the Yaris is for all intents and purposes built for racing and extreme performance.

“The Toyota Yaris is a very special car in general already because it’s born from [the WRC]. They’ve made this car on the road in purpose to make the WRC car [for] homologation into the FIA. This is really a car that’s been built, you know, for racing,” he explained.

Ocon also revealed a phone call he had with Ogier who explained his inputs in designing and tuning the car. Owners of the Ogier edition Yaris get an additional mode on the four-wheel drive system called the ‘Push Seb’ mode.

Ogier revealed that he spent an entire day on track trying to optimize the torque delivery between the front and rear axles and the ‘Push Seb’ mode is the differential setting that suited him the best.

In addition to the touch of an eight-time world champion, the Yaris also comes with a six-speed manual transmission and a three-cylinder, 1.6-liter turbo-charged engine capable of producing a whopping 250+ horsepower.

Post Edited By: Aishwary Gaonkar
Esteban Ocon

About the author

Anirban Aly Mandal

Anirban Aly Mandal is an F1 writer at The SportsRush, with over 1000 articles under his belt, Anirban's love for F1 started when he discovered a copy of F1 2014 on his computer. With over half a decade's worth of time spent religiously following the sport, he’s dived deep into the world of motorsports. However, Anirban's expertise goes beyond just writing - he has also written several academic papers focused on the domain of motorsports and the law. His passion for the sport is so immense that he aspires to work as a legal advisor in the most prestigious racing series in the world someday. When it comes to Formula 1, Anirban finds great pleasure in re-watching classic races and idolizes the likes of Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, and Sebastian Vettel. His top picks include Brazil '91, Silverstone '92, and Germany '19. Outside of the sport, Anirban is an avid sim racer, often found racing on titles like Assetto Corsa, F1 22, and Automobilista. Apart from his interests in gaming, Anirban has a keen interest in philosophy, literature and music.

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