The Schumacher of the Stages and the Young Pretenders

Just a couple of weeks after Andy Priaulx matched Michael Schumacher and Tommi Makinen by winning four consecutive FIA sanctioned championships, Sebastien Loeb equaled his feat. The French former gymnast has demonstrated a degree of dominance that has really only ever been matched in the motorsports world by Schumacher himself.

Let's not forget, after all, just how quickly he developed into a world class rally driver. After winning the first ever Junior World Rally Championship at the wheel of a Citroen Saxo in 2001, he came very close to winning his first rally outright at the end of the season in a Citroen Xsara Kit Car, finishing just 11 seconds behind Gilles Panizzi at the San Remo rally. A part-season spent developing the Citroen Xsara WRC brought him victory on the road in his first event in a WRC car at Monte Carlo (he was later penalised for a breach of servicing regulations and bumped back to 3rd), which he followed up with his first actual victory, later in the year at the Rally Germany.

In his first full season, he lost the World Championship to Petter Solberg by just a single point, ane even then only after having to follow team orders to take it steady at the final round - Wales Rally GB, as Citroen wanted to ensure that they at least walked away with the constructor's title. A year later, he dominated the championship, finishing over 20 points ahead of Petter Solberg to score the first of his four titles. Of course, it would be easy to suggest that he has done so by virtue of a large car advantage - and there is some truth in such a claim - certainly Subaru have been off the boil for the last couple of years, and Ford have only really sorted out their Focus this season - but it is worth remembering that in the time he has been driving for Citroen, Loeb has stacked up 36 victories. His team mates, over the same period, have won just three rallies - and those team mates have included no lesser men than Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae. In 2006, after all, he even won the title in an outdated privately entered Citroen Xsara.

All this is a quite remarkable achievement given that even the best world rally drivers usually take several years to learn their craft. Colin McRae was considered something of a youngster when he won his only title back in 1995, but by then he had been competing - if sporadically, in Group A8 machinery for half a decade or more. Marcus Gronholm and Tommi Makinen both spent years in relative obscurity before emerging as serious title contenders. In comparison to circuit racing, it would seem that in rallying, experience plays a much bigger part relative to innate ability. Perhaps no surprise given that, while the circuits the F1 boys visit are increasingly homogenous, there is little linking the challenges of Norway, Monte Carlo, the Acropolis, Catalunya and the Rally GB. Different surfaces, wildly varying weather conditions and fundamentally different stage layouts take time to master - unless, it would seem, you are Sebastien Loeb.

This year, though, he faced the toughest battle he has had since he fought Solberg and Burns for the title back in 2003. Marcus Gronholm finally got his Focus WRC06 working to his liking, and Loeb initially had to deal with iffy reliability on the new Citroen C4. With two rounds to go, Gronholm held a four point lead, but a crash on Rally Ireland put Loeb in the pound seats to win his fourth consecutive title at the final round - which he duly did.

The question, though, is where on earth Loeb's opposition will come from now that 40-something Gronholm has decided to hang up his helmet. It would not seem that that opposition is likely to come from team mate, and fellow graduate of the Citroen junior WRC team, Dani Sordo. Sordo may have done a competent job, and helped rack up constructors points for Citroen, but away from his preferred tarmac, he looked average at best. On snow, he was rather worse than that.

I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised by Mikko Hirvonen this year. I had thought the Finn decidedly underwhelming when he first appeared as a works Subaru driver back in 2004, and had seen little to change my mind when he reappeared as a Ford works driver a couple of years ago. I initially put down his Norwegian Rally victory as a one-off, but his increasingly impressive form towards the end of this year suggest that he may at last be maturing into the kind of driver who can lead Ford's assault on the championship next year.

If Malcolm Wilson and the powers that be at Ford can face having two Finns in the works team next year, it appears to me that they could do a lot worse than to hire Jari-Matti Latvala to drive alongside Hirvonen next year. While Hirvonen was impressing everyone by out-pacing the two title contenders at the Rally GB, fewer people noticed that Latvala was going quicker than anyone else - and won all but 2 of Saturday and Sunday's stages. Had he not retired on Friday (he rejoined under the baffling SupeRally rules) with a windscreen that misted so badly he could no longer see where he was going, he would probably have won. Not bad for a guy in his first full season in the WRC, driving a second-string Stobart Focus.

If the thought of two Finns at Ford scares the marketing men too much (though they lived with it this year...) there are a few other options which would be well worth scoping out - drivers who, in any sane world, would have works drives, but are reduced to occasional private entries when they can get the money together. To my mind, the most promising candidate of the lot is Italian Gigi Galli. Thirty five year old Galli may be no youngster, but he impressed mightily on occasion in the odd outings he has had over the last couple of years. In Norway, he was right on the pace of the front runners in a privately entered Citroen until losing time with an off.

If Galli is too much of a gamble, and too old to seem like he's really the future, Ford (or perhaps Subaru) might like to re-investigate their recent past. Francois Duval comes with something of a chequered reputation, having had perhaps more than his fair share of big accidents in his time at Citroen and Ford. Thing is, though, Duval was seriously quick on occasion. And he showed that he still is, when he returned in a private Xsara at the Rally Deutschland this year and set stage times which gave Loeb pause for thought.


Whatever Ford decide to do, it is clear that something needs to be done to bring fresh talent into the WRC. With Gronholm's retirement, Petter Solberg is now the only front-running driver from the pre-Loeb era still competing. The Stobart team has afforded a vital opportunity for Latvala to learn the ropes this year, but the sport needs more opportunities for promising drivers, young or not-so-young to get experience in front-running cars. Large cheques and nepotism have allowed second-raters like Luis Perez-Companc, Matthew Wilson, Manfred Stohl and Henning Solberg to take up drives which more rightly should have gone to people like Guy Wilks, Per-Gunnar Anderson, Patrick Sandell and other emerging young drivers. If the sport, which has been going through something of an extended rough patch, is to survive and prosper, then it is vital that drivers who might have the raw ability to challenge Loeb are given the breaks they need.

Green shoots of recovery?

In the early 1990s, there was an economic recession in Britain.  The
people, as they are wont to do when things go wrong, blamed the government. Stuck for any more sensible answer, the government of the time chose at first simply to deny that there was a recession at all. When this line became
untenable in the face of overwhelming evidence, they instead began to
tell us that the corner had been turned, and that we were now enjoying the "green shoots of recovery". Spring, one might
say, was a long time coming, and the phrase became something of a
running joke.

It was a strangely comic little episode that came back to me with the
beginning of the 2007 World Rally Championship this weekend. ISC, who
own the rights to the series, have spent a lot of time denying that
there is anything wrong whatsoever with the World Rally Championship.
After a season in which 15 of the 16 wins were shared between just 2
drivers, and only 2 full works teams were involved, that has become a
rather hard line to maintain. So now we are hearing that the worst is
over, and that the 2007 season will be an altogether more close fought
affair.

Well, maybe... There are, however, still only three full manufacturer
teams this year. Citroen are back as a full works team, with their new
C4. In a sense, they were never really away, as there was little doubt
that they were pulling a lot of the strings for Kronos last year, in an
effort to keep Sebastien Loeb from heading off elsewhere in search of a
competitive ride. Ford, and Subaru, of course, are still around.
However, just as last year, each of those three teams has only one
really established star driver. Sebastien Loeb, with his three straight
titles, needs no introduction. The same can be said of former champions,
Marcus Gronholm and Petter Solberg. But their number two
drivers? Of those, only Mikko Hirvonen has ever actually won a round of
the championship - and even then only because Loeb missed Rally
Australia last year, and Gronholm crashed out. Dani Sordo, over at
Citroen, is to my mind ultimately a more promising prospect than
Hirvonen, having won
the Junior WRC two years ago, but has only ever really impressed on
tarmac. Chris Atkinson strikes me as a rather eccentric choice for
Subaru, but the team have stuck with him for another year. He's proved
quick from time to time, but has been crash-prone to an extent that even

a young Colin McRae would have struggled to match.

Having said that, on the evidence of the Monte this year, perhaps the
understudies will be a little closer to their illustrious team mates
this year. I've never been especially enthusiastic about Mikko Hirvonen,

and have heard stories that he only got the drive at Ford because he
came with a truckload of cash, but he seemed nearer to Gronholm's pace
than was the case last year. Dani Sordo appeared to give an
admittedly below-par Loeb a run for his money at the front, although
whether either driver was really being allowed to fight is an open
question. Such was Citroen's margin of superiority in the Ardeche last
weekend, it is hard to know whether we saw anything more than a
demonstration run from the two drivers. In the end, it was Atkinson who
did best of the
trio, beating Petter Solberg fair and square, and mixing it with the
faster Ford of
Hirvonen into the bargain. For once, he didn't fall off the road and
finished a very creditable 4th, equalling his best finish of last year.

All the same, there are an awful lot of young, seemingly talented rally
drivers who might be more obvious candidates for the number 2 drives.
Its a
shame that third cars have become so uncommon over the last couple of
seasons, thanks to changes in the way manufacturer points are scored.
Were they not, surely somebody would be tempted to give Gigi Galli a
drive, for example. Its nice to see Jari-Matti Latvala getting a
full-time ride in the second-string Stobart Ford team, but, having seen
him in
action in the British championship from time to time, I can't help
feeling he's worthy of a full works seat. Jan Kopecky did a good job of
hustling the two year old Skoda Fabia into the points last weekend, and
is perhaps worthy of better equipment. All the same, the most striking
thing about
the Monte Carlo entry list is the number of really promising drivers
absent from it. Such is the lack of full works teams that there was no
place on it, for instance, for Francois Duval, Daniel Carlson and Janne
Tuohino. And that's to say nothing of the guys who have impressed in the
JWRC over the pastcouple of years, like Kris Meeke, Per-Gunnar Anderson,
Guy Wilks and Patrick Sandell. The trouble these drivers have is that,
to a much greater extent than is the case in circuit racing, it takes
time to become competitive at the top level in rally driving. Even the
supernaturally talented - the likes of Sebastien Loeb
and Petter Solberg, took a few seasons to find their feet before
launching a championship bid. Loeb was instantly quick on tarmac, but
took time to find real pace on tarmac. To some extent, the reverse was
true of Petter Solberg, though it is fair to say he took longer to make
an impact anyway. Currently, the big works teams (Citroen aside) seem
happier to run a reasonably experienced journeyman in their number two
seat than to take their chances with a less-than-mature talent.

So is the World Championship in any better state than last year? Well, I

suppose Jari-Matti Latvala's place at Stobart is worth something, and
Sordo will be more of a threat now he has a season's experience to draw
on, but overall, it still looks pretty weak. On one crude measure things
have improved. Last year, under the old SupeRally rules,
Loeb dropped five minutes and still finished second. Add a five minute
penalty to his winning time this year, and he wouldn't even have made
the points.

Overall, though, the lack of strength in depth in the series
is at its worst since the late eighties, after the abolition of Group B,

when Lancia basically had the sport to themselves for a few years. That
time round, it was understandable. Group B had been cancelled suddenly,
and its proposed replacement, Group S, had gone the same way, with the
formula that replaced it - Group A, looking decidedly unexciting by
comparison. It was not surprising that manufacturers were reluctant to
commit to the sport with such uncertainty about the future rules. This
time round, there is no such easy explanation.

The WRC rules have been around for the best part of a decade, there is
no need to go to the trouble of producing 5000 road cars, as used to be
the case, and yet still the manufacturers stay away.  Other than the
anticipated entry of Suzuki into the series later in the year, there is
little sign that any of this is going to change in the immediate future
either.  Green shoots of recovery?  I suspect we could be a long time
waiting for the flowers to bloom.