Sébastien Loeb put on a dominant display this weekend, driving to victory in Corsica. The Frenchman’s win on asphalt goes back to back with his performance in Spain recently. With Tour de Course being the penultimate tarmac event of the season, Loeb has yet another asphalt rally to look forward to in Ireland.
Loeb’s closest rival, Marcus Gronholm, managed a respectable run at Tour de Corse, despite his obvious preference of the looser gravel surfaces to slide around on. It actually looked like the flying Finn had what it took to take a decent fight to Loeb, but by the end of leg one, Loeb was clear of the rest of the pack. At the end of leg two he was over half a minute ahead of Gronholm.
Loeb won the first stage of leg three and managed top five finishes for the rest of the day, though he constantly kept an eye on rivalling times.
“I am particularly fond of this event and I am delighted to have won here again,” said Loeb at the finish. “It wasn’t a particularly restful weekend and we didn’t get off to the best of starts. However, along with the technical team, we responded well after making some small adjustments to the set-up of our C4. I felt much happier with my car from Friday afternoon on and that enabled us to take the lead, pull clear and ultimately win.”
Many would not have expected Gronholm to do really well, but he did more than enough by finishing second and still leads the driver’s championship by four points. Although he has improved on tarmac, finishing second two rallies in a row can’t sit too well with Gronholm, who is most likely waiting to exact some sweet revenge at the last two gravel events of the season.
“It will be really tight for the next three rallies and I have no idea who will be world champion”, stated Gronholm. A four-point lead is nothing, especially with three rallies coming. I could not do better here but Japan will be really hard now. Winning there would help me a lot but I’m not feeling too much pressure at the moment,”
Dani Sordo, Loeb’s Citroen teammate, had hoped for a repeat of Citroen’s one-two finish at Rally Catalunya. Although Sordo pushed hard throughout the event, he never fully recovered from handling problems stemming from day one, and the Spaniard had to settle for third.
“I’m disappointed not to have succeeded in finishing second, I didn’t feel comfortable with my car yesterday and I fell too far back to stand any real chance of ensuring another one-two finish for Citroen after our result in Spain last weekend ”, said Sordo. “I still had tremendous fun, even though this was only my second visit to Corsica in a WRC car.”
The battle for fourth place proved more exciting fare, as top five regular, Mikko Hirvonen, crashed out on day one, relinquishing the spot to Francois Duval, who, in turn, suffered gearbox problems during day two. Jari-Matti Latvala, from privateer team Stobart Motorsport, eventually took fourth while advancing well up the order, passing former world champion Petter Solberg (who finished fifth) on the way.
With three more rallies to go, the battle for the championship is really hotting up, on both driver and constructor fronts. Rally Japan (gravel) is next on the list in two weeks time, with Ireland (asphalt) slotted in between Japan and the season finale, Wales, another gravel event.
