Category: Citroen

In the end it was good fortune that handed Sebastien Loeb his eighth WRC title. Loeb was forced out of Wales Rally GB following a low-impact collision with a tourist on a non-competitive stage. Thankfully, for Loeb, his closest rival, Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen, had already retired from the event.

“It’s proof that a rally isn’t over till you’re back in the parc fermé!” said Loeb of the race-ending incident. “It’s a pity because I would have liked to have finished the battle with Jari-Matti. What happened is fairly ordinary: we were on a narrow road and we came upon a car on the top of a crest where there was no visibility. The Spanish driver had the wrong reflex and pulled in to the right and we collided!”

“So far we haven’t really had time to celebrate this title as we were completely involved in the rally. Again this morning we had to get up at 4.30 am to go and tackle the stages,” added Loeb. “Now we can celebrate it at last with the whole team. All the titles are important and memorable as they’re never put together in the same way. This season, the overall level was very high and we had to fight right down till the last rally.”

Citroën is making a fair bit out of Loeb overtaking Michael Schumacher’s record of seven world championships. Loeb followed suit, saying, “I’m proud to have become the most-titled racing driver, even if one shouldn’t really try and compare the different branches of the sport. I never thought I’d achieve this when I started my career!”

More after the break, including a short video and interview with Loeb at the scene of his accident.

A retirement for Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen at the Rally of Great Britain has handed Sebastien Loeb his eighth consecutive WRC title. The rally is still in progress, but Loeb can no longer be beaten for the crown.

“Mikko was going like a bat out of hell and we were scrapping for every tenth of a second. In SS7, I started flat out as I wanted to get back in front,” said Loeb at the end of Day 2.

“There was fog and the grip suited me a lot better. Mikko made a mistake and the situation has turned in our favour. If his retirement is confirmed it means that we’re world champions, and we can take it easy.”

We’ll have more from Citroën after the rally is finished.

[Source: Citroën WRC]

Citroën super star Sebastien Loeb won Rally Spain from Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen on the weekend and in doing so put himself back in the outright lead in the chase for the 2011 drivers’ world championship.

Despite an engine failure and subsequent DNF from Citroën driver Sebastien Ogier, Loeb’s victory was enough to secure a seventh manufacturers’ title for the French outfit. Failure in Spain was a double blow for Ogier who is now out of the title race with just one rally left in season 2011.

It was another solid outing for MINI with Dani Sordo finishing fourth and teammate Kris Meeke behind in fifth. You sense there’ll be a victory or two in store for MINI in 2012.

Loeb now holds a slender eight point lead over Hirvonen, despite the Frenchman winning five races so far this year to the the Finn’s two. There’s 25 points plus bonuses on offer for a win and the final race in Wales (10–13 November) shapes up as being a nail-biter.

Speaking after his win in Spain, Loeb said, “For the moment we’re celebrating Citroën’s seventh title! But the drivers’ crown is far from over. Mikko Hirvonen has done a good job by finishing second here and we know he’ll be competitive on the stages in Wales. We must finish in front of him. The best thing we could do would be to win. So our destiny is in our own hands!”

Citroën will be overjoyed that a Frenchman won the team’s home event on the weekend. But it was the other Sebastien standing atop the Rally France podium, not seven-time world champion Sebastien Loeb.

Sounding yet another warning shot to his established rivals was Dani Sordo at the wheel of his MINI. The Spaniard led the rally on Day 2 and finished the race in second, just 6.3 seconds behind Ogier.

Loeb retired on Day 1 with an engine failure. “There’s never a right time for something like this to hit us, but it’s the last rally in which I would have wanted it to happen,” he said. “I’m going to have to fight hard in the last two rallies of the season if I want to win my eighth world crown.”

It was Ogier’s fifth win of the year and he now has 193 points. His 26 points from Rally France closing the gap to Loeb to just three points in the drivers’ title race.

Speaking after the rally Ogier said, “It’s been a very long rally as I carried the responsibility for the whole team on my shoulders. I’m just happy to be able to relax. Obviously, this victory means a lot to me from a personal point of view. Five wins in a season is already a pretty good achievement. I’d like to thank the team which gave me a perfect car. Congratulations also to Dani Sordo; he drove really well all weekend and it wasn’t easy to beat him.”

Petter Solberg finished the event in third place, placing another Citroën on the podium. However, he has since been disqualified after scrutineers revealed his car was 4kg underweight. That moved Mikko Hirvonen into third place for the rally and equal first with Loeb in the championship race.

More from Citroën after the break.

Sebastien Ogier won Rally Germany on the weekend. It was a sweet victory for the young Frenchman, too, who was not pleased when ordered by team bosses on Saturday morning to stay behind Loeb and not challenge for the race win.

Later in the day Loeb suffered a puncture and Ogier inherited the lead, prompting the younger Sebastien to say, “At least there is some justice in the sport.”

Loeb responded in kind by saying, “Maybe he talks too much sometimes. It’s not his fault I got the puncture. He can say what he wants.”

It is the first time Loeb has been beaten in Germany, ending a run of seven wins since the event entered the WRC in 2002. The win is Citroën’s 78th victory in the WRC and now takes them one ahead of Ford on the all-time list of wins in the sport.

Ogier now has four wins this year, the same number as Loeb, and sits 25pts behind the seven-time world champ. Only disaster will stop Citroën from winning the manufacturers’ championship. Although, showing increased competition is not too far away, Dani Sordo in his MINI WRC finished the rally in third place in just the third start for the new team.

The WRC comes to Australia next month. So if you’re near the NSW north coast, why don’t you check it out.

Sebastien Loeb has agreed terms with Citroën to drive for them in the World Rally Championship until the end of the 2013 season. He is currently celebrating that news by holding a comfortable lead in Rally Deutschland.

Talking about his contract extension Loeb says he’s looking forward to a new era in the WRC, “With the arrival of other manufacturers in the championship, the competition is going to get tougher in the years to come.

“All the more so with the rule changes concerning the starting order coming in 2012 as all the drivers will be fighting on a level playing field,” he said.

“To take the fight to them I’m putting my trust in Citroën, a team I know inside out and the DS3 WRC, the car that I helped set up with Citroën Racing.”

If Loeb completes the win in Germany he will make Citroën the most successful manufacturer of all time. Currently Citroën and Ford are tied on 77 wins; incredibly, 66 of Citroën’s wins have been thanks to the seven-time champion from France. It’s no wonder the relationship will continue.

From one seven-time world champion to another, the official WRC website reports Sebastien Loeb is contemplating what car he might be driving in 2012 and beyond.

According to the 37-year-old Frenchman his current employer Citroën are willing, “They are waiting for me so I have to decide in the next week,” Loeb said in an interview Autosport magazine.

“I will decide whether I stay at Citroën or stay in the rally, but with somebody else or retire and do something else. One thing is sure, I will not stop driving.”

The Citroën–Loeb partnership has proven to be unbeatable, but how long can it go on? Would Loeb consider moving to a new team, such as Volkswagen, due to enter the WRC in 2013. If so he could retrace the early part of his career and help develop the Polo R WRC just as he did with Citroën.

“Yeah, for sure, it’s also an opportunity for me, maybe,” said Loeb.

Clearly, Citroën want Loeb to stay. And it seems as though team boss Oliver Quesnel will have an answer very soon.

[Source: WRC]

Sebastien Loeb won his second Rally Finland event on the weekend, the first time a non-Finnish driver has won the rally more than once. Loeb finished 8.1 seconds ahead of Ford driver Jari-Matti Latvala. Loeb’s Citroën teammate Sebastien Ogier was third.

Success in Finland gives Loeb his 66th career win and a healthy 27 point lead in the title race. In an ominous sign for his rivals Loeb says he is placed just where he wants to be in the chase for his eighth world crown and says the DS3 WRC is the best car he’s ever had.

“It’s one of the greatest wins of my career. But I had to work for it and it took a long time before it took shape. Sometimes you have to go beyond the limits to open up the gap. I felt really good on the roads with the Citroën DS3 WRC, even more so than in the past with the Xsara or the C4. My aim was to be in the lead in the world championship before the events on tarmac. I’ve achieved it, but there are still a lot of points up for grabs.”

More from Citroën after the break. The WRC revs back into life at Rally Deutschland (18–21 August).

It was all Citroën in Greece over the weekend as Sebastien Ogier notched up his third WRC win for the year, adding the Acropolis Rally trophy to his cabinet. On Day 1 privateer Petter Solberg placed his DS3 WRC in a commanding lead only to be swallowed up by the works entries on Day 2.

The final day saw the two Sebastien’s fighting over the lead and ultimately the race win. Seven time world champs Sebastien Loeb started the day with a slender advantage over his teammate. Ogier, though, wasn’t giving in and fought hard to eventually claim victory by 10.5 seconds.

It’s the 22nd time Citroën has achieved a one-two victory and it sets a new benchmark for the WRC. Remarkably, Loeb’s second place marks the 100th time he has stood on the podium.

After the race Ogier paid tribute to his team’s reliability, “I’d really like to thank the whole team for two things. One, it gave Seb and I the same chances to battle for victory, and I’m proud to have honoured their trust with a win. Secondly, I have to underline the reliability of the DS3 WRC, which had a problem-free three days in a race that was run at high speed.”

The 2011 WRC season is just over half complete now. Citroen has won six of the seven races, while Ford won the opening event in Sweden. Loeb currently stands atop the championship standings on 146 points, ahead of Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen (129pts) and Ogier (124pts).

Rally Finland is the next event on the 2011 calendar and will be held on 28–30 July.

Somehow, Sebastien Loeb has managed to win Rally Argentina and extend his championship lead to 13 points. After day one Loeb was hit with a 60 second time penalty, but he proved persistence pays off by ultimately claiming the lead on the final stage to earn a slender 2.4 second win over Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen.

Earlier Jari-Matti Latvala (Ford) and Sebastien Ogier (Citroën) looked likely victors only to surrender the lead. It was suspension failure for Latvala and Ogier crashed on the opening stage of the final day. While both men were able to finish the event, they will rue the opportunity lost.

Reflecting on his sixth win in Argentina, Loeb acknowldged his good fortune, “After Friday’s penalty I wasn’t counting on this victory. We pushed really hard to get back in contact with the front-runners and to beat Hirvonen. Once again the outcome was decided by a hair’s breadth. It seems that Rally Argentina is my happy hunting ground!”

Seven time World Rally Champion and Citroën works driver Sebastien Loeb extended his lead in the 2011 WRC standings with victory in the Rally d’Italia Sardegna.

Loeb explains being the first car our during the rally brought tricky conditions, “We started with the big disadvantage of being first out on the road on the opening day. We managed to take the lead and build up a small cushion, which we maintained yesterday and today. To do so we had to go pedal to the metal from start to finish.

“I felt good in the car, and this helped me push really hard. Obviously, it was very fraught at certain moments so it’s a big relief to see the end of the rally.”

In second place was Ford driver Miko Hirvonen. Third place was claimed by privateer entrant Petter Solberg, driving a Citröen DS3 WRC.

Rally d’Italia also marked the debut race for the new MINI John Cooper Works WRC. Drivers Dani Sordo and Kris Meeke posted respectbale times and Sordo finished the race in sixth place. Meeke was plagued by reliability issues and the team will come away form the event with some solid data to aid their ongoing development.

The next rally takes place in Argentina (26–29 May). MINI will sit out the next two rallies before rejoining competition at Rally Finland in late July.