I first met six-time World Rally Champion and current points leader Sébastien Ogier wearing a sombrero. For once, the grammatical ambiguity of that sentence is irrelevant, because we were both wearing sombreros.

And guess what? In the course of a lockdown clear-out (which I guess a few people have been doing recently), I actually found my sombrero: crumpled at the bottom of an old suitcase along with a vicar’s cassock (don’t ask).

I was given this headwear at the 2008 Rally Mexico – the first round of what turned out to be Ogier’s title year in the Junior WRC – when his Citroën team was hosting a pre-rally shindig that ticked every Mexican cliché in the book.

The 24-year-old Frenchman was introduced, looking slightly geeky with a pudding-bowl haircut and a white Citroën shirt straight out of the packet. He had a solid rather than spectacular reputation at that point, having won the Peugeot 206 Cup in France the year before, which is why nobody who wasn’t French had heard of him.

2 Ogier celebrating

Obviously you had to be good to lift the Peugeot 206 Cup, but it’s a big leap from winning a one-make national championship to competing in the global series intended as a breeding ground for future rally champions.