Citroën driver Sébastien Loeb has claimed his sixth consecutive world title and 54th career victory with a win at the Rally Great Britain – his seventh success of the 2009 season.
Loeb has further engraved his name into the history books with a stellar performance on the final round of the season, resulting in what he called “my toughest title yet”.
At the rally finish in Cardiff, the 35-year-old Frenchman added: “It’s been an incredible year. I’m delighted because it was a fantastic battle throughout the season. Mentally it was tough to hang on. We had a perfect start to the year but then it all went a bit wrong for us. So to come to the last event at Rally Great Britain with a one-point deficit in the championship put big pressure on us. There was no question of making a mistake here.”
In fact, this was the first time in seven years that Loeb had come to the final round of the season in any position other than the lead of the championship. He started the final day, which consisted of four stages and 79 competitive kilometres, with an advantage of half a minute over his only title rival – Ford driver Mikko Hirvonen.
Hirvonen took eight-tenths of a second out of Loeb on the opening stage, Port Talbot, but then inflicted some serious damage on the following stage – carving a massive 11 seconds out of Loeb’s lead. Suddenly the gap was back down to 18s and Hirvonen had a sniff of a chance of his first world title. The Frenchman insisted that he didn’t have a mechanical problem but instead said that he was simply far too cautious on the slippery mud that characterised the Rheola forest stage.
'It's been an incredible year' – Sébastien Loeb
In any case, the title fight was over less than an hour later on the following stage, when Hirvonen’s bonnet flew open as he landed after a fast jump. The 29-year-old Finn was forced to stop and rip it off, losing more than a minute in the process. Having effectively waved goodbye to the title he also had another more pressing problem on his hands – Loeb’s team mate Dani Sordo who was now just 0.9s behind him heading into the final stage.
Hirvonen won the last stage – by just a tenth of a second – to secure the runner-up spot in both the rally and the championship. “Really I lost the rally yesterday, when I wasn’t quite able to keep pace with Sébastien during the final two stages of the morning,” reflected Hirvonen. “I tried everything but it wasn’t quite enough. Now I need to go back to work and find a bit more speed for next year.”
The final day contained drama for Citroën’s protégé Sébastien Ogier, who went off on SS15 trying to avoid some rocks kicked up by the cars in front. He badly damaged the front of his C4 WRC and was forced to retire from a hard-earned fifth place. Hirvonen’s team mate, Jari-Matti Latvala, also hit problems on the final morning. The Finn slid wide on the second stage of the day, clouting the rear of his Focus WRC against a bank and breaking its suspension. Nonetheless, he managed to hang onto a points-scoring eighth place, which became seventh after Ogier retired.
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