The Citroën Total World Rally Team found itself on unknown terrain, and took full advantage of the 4-hour shakedown for Rally Australia to multiply the passes and test different setups on the DS3 WRCs entered for Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and Sébastien Ogier/Julien Ingrassia.
Beforehand, Sébastien Loeb, the world championship leader with 25 points in hand over his team-mate, had discovered a route with similar characteristics to those of Rally Finland and Rally New Zealand.
“It’s very quick,” the seven-time world champion commented this morning. “The first and third days are run in forests and the second one is like New Zealand. The stages look great!”
On a route like this, the driver opening the road tomorrow and doing the sweeping could be faced with a number of unpredictable factors: “It’s rarely an advantage to start in first place, and the weather doesn’t look like it’s going to make things any easier, especially on hard tyres. So far, I’m preparing myself for the fact that my position is more an inconvenience than anything else. We’ll just have to see.”
“The route’s new and it’s everybody’s first time out in the stages. I hope that we’ve taken good notes during the two reconnaissance passes,” he added.
Loeb and Elena used the four hours’ test to run through suspension settings and collect the maximum amount of data on terrain on which the Citroën DS3 WRC hasn’t yet raced.
“We’ve got a victory in hand,” the Alsatian stated. “Our priority is to avoid making mistakes. But we’ll have to fight as well. We’ll just push as hard as we can and leave calculations till the end.”
Ogier, who is currently 25 points behind Loeb, hopes that this new route will allow him to show what he’s really capable of: “The stages are fantastic; they’re quick and wide. They’re a mixture of what you find in Finland and New Zealand, two events that I love.”
“I’m discovering a new route,” he added. “It’s never very easy but everybody’s in the same boat. Given our relative lack of experience in relation to our rivals, it can only be an advantage for us.”
The aim is ‘to obtain the best possible result’. By finishing 38 points in front of its main rivals, Citroën could bag the title on Sunday in Australia mathematically speaking.