After travelling to the other side of the world, the 2011 World Rally Championship will finish in Europe.
The ‘Rallye de France-Alsace’, the first of the three remaining events, will be on Citroën’s home turf. Last year, Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena won their seventh world title in Strasbourg, and the
Citroën Total World Rally Team scored its sixth Manufacturers’ World Championship crown. Twelve months later the French make is aiming for more wins with its two crews.
‘Rallye de France’ was held in Corsica since the creation of the world championship in 1973. Last year it moved to Alsace. The event took place in the heart of Europe and it was a huge popular success attracting over 250 000 spectators. The great majority of the public only had eyes for one driver, Sébastien Loeb, the local lad who was on his way to winning his seventh world title. Despite the pressure and the various pitfalls of the route, the bloke from Oberhoffen scored a hands-down victory giving him and his team, Citroën, more world titles.
A year later, Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena start the eleventh round with a 15-point lead over their nearest rival.
“We have to watch out as proved by the results in the last two rallies,” says Loeb. “A puncture in Germany and we lost victory, a moment’s inattention in Australia led to an off and prevents me from tackling the end of the season in a calm state of mind. We won Rally France last year, so we’re the favourites and we’ll do everything possible to honour this position. But victories don’t fall off trees! Before even thinking of the podium we have to master the difficulties of this very tricky route. Last year, the speeds we reached on the roads really struck me. With potentially capricious weather and innumerable changes of surface, you have to know how to read the road to adapt your braking distances and your trajectories. The organizers have announced that they’re going to put posts on the apexes to prevent the roads from getting dirty too quickly. Maybe that’ll make things easier on the second pass.”
Last year, Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia made a great start to the rally and then lost time due to a suspension breakage after an impact on an apex. They saw the flag in sixth place overall after showing real potential. Since then the pair won their first tarmac rally in Germany a few weeks back. Ogier also made a mistake in Australia and lost second place in the world championship to Mikko Hirvonen. The Frenchman is now 29 points behind his team-mate (more than a rally victory) and knows that his chances of winning the title are slim.
“I’m at the team’s service to help it win more titles. To fine-tune my preparation for this type of
terrain, which I’m slightly familiar with, I took part in the Vosges rally two weeks ago. That helped me to gain experience on terrain that’s similar to that of Rally France in racing conditions,” said Sébastien. “We’ll see how the race pans out, but I’m going to try and stay close to my team-mate who’s the benchmark on this type of surface.”
As in Australia, the Citroën Total World Rally Team can win the manufacturers’ title before the end of the season. To achieve this the team must extend its lead to 86 points compared to 62 at present.