Thank the lord for Sebastien Ogier, saviour of the World Rally Championship. That’s a bit strong, perhaps, but after winning Rally Portugal last weekend, he’s what the series has been waiting for: a new, young driver who can both perform consistently, and beat Sebastien Loeb on merit.

Jari-Matti Latvala has beaten Loeb, and Dani Sordo is pretty consistent. But the last driver to develop both qualities was Mikko Hirvonen. That seems like a long time ago. And, incidentally, Hirvonen seems to have gone to tits this season.

To my shame, I left Ogier out of my 10 word WRC. But I did pose the question of whether he might outclass Latvala and Sordo this season; though I didn’t even consider Hirvonen to be under threat.

But Sordo is the interesting one in this situation. He’s proved capable of supporting Loeb’s championship campaigns – which is presumably why Citroen have repeatedly retained his services – but after four and a half seasons in the top Citroen team, he is still yet to win a rally. That’s rubbish. Sordo’s hopes for the future seem to rest on Citroen running three cars next year.

Ogier’s rise hasn’t been the WRC’s only storyline so far this year. There have been those high-profile new boys.

It’s not surprising that Kimi Raikkonen is bottom of the regular entries in the standings. At least he’s finishing rallies and scoring some points, though.

American Ken Block has had a tougher time. He’s got nothing to show for his three rallies this year, apart from a repeatedly battered Ford Focus. What is interesting, however, is the reason: pace notes.

I expected Block to outperform Raikkonen, on the basis that Block has been competitive in Rally America for some years. It’s not at the level of the WRC, but surely it’s more similar than, well, Formula 1.

What I didn’t know is that Rally America uses the Jemba Inertia Notes System, which produces automated pace notes. So Block is not used to producing his own notes on the recce. That’s why he thinks he’s struggling: his notes aren’t good enough, so he crashes.

But what I’m most thankful for, is that the last couple of rallies have had good fights for the lead. The start of the season was somewhat lacking in excitement, and though the coverage on Dave has been pretty bloody good even when given precious little action to work with, what we really want are good close rallies, and a good close championship. Here’s hoping.