Citroen’s Sebastien Loeb has won his sixth consecutive driver’s title in the World Rally Championship after winning this past weekend’s Wales Rally GB.
Loeb and previous championship leader Mikko Hirvonen were locked in a tight battle up to the third day of the long rally, when on the second to last stage Hirvonen’s hood started flapping around as a result of a damaged hood pin, blocking his view and forcing him to slow down. He proceeded to stop and rip off the broken hood (a custom carbon fiber hood worth more than all of my worldly possessions combined, by the way), but by then Loeb had sealed the deal with a stage win and walked away with another title.
This Loeb guy needs to start racing F1 already. He’s crazy fast, and needs to be put to the test. It’s time to get out of the rally game and let someone else win for a change, dude. Jeez.
That’s the end of the 2009 WRC season. 2010 starts in Sweden for the uh, Swedish Rally on the 14th of February. Hopefully by then it will be shown on TV here in North America and you don’t have to rely on filtering out my mindless banter to get the deets.
Video recap below, courtesy of www.wrc.com’s youtube hot bag of goodness.
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Great job by Loeb and the Citroen team!
Your comment about F1 reminds me of a Brit version of Tradin’ Paint a few years back.
Colin McRae and Damon Hill switched rides for a day. Hill never quite seemed to get a handle on the twitchy Subaru, not even coming close to setting a competitive time. McRae on the other hand settled in nicely in the Williams F1 car. so much so in fact that his times were within tenths of Hills time after a few laps.
I think the difference lies in the type of reactions a driver is used to needing. An F1 driver is following the same lap, time after time, only having the occasional errant competitor to avoid. The rally driver however has many, many unkown elements in every single turn, not the least of which is being unfamiliar with the road. That constant variance builds drivers that are super adaptable to their surroundings.
For that reason, I think Loeb would be successful in F1.