Hirvonen falls short; Loeb takes sixth WRC title

Motor sport weekend ends France 2, Finland 0

Sebastien Loeb

Ari Vatanen

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Sebastien Loeb (Citroen) took victory in the Rally of Great Britain at the weekend, and in so doing the Frenchman wrapped up his 6th World Rally Championship title, overhauling Finland's Mikko Hirvonen (Ford) by a single point.
      Loeb finished the season with 93 points to Hirvonen's 92, and the championship came down to how the two drivers placed in the 12th and final event on the calendar.
     
Loeb held a comfortable lead after two days of the rally, but on the Sunday Hirvonen mounted a charge and reduced the gap, before his hopes of catching Loeb were blighted by a technical glitch.
      After going over a hump at high speed, the bonnet of Hirvonen's Ford sprang loose and then reared up dangerously against the vehicle's windscreen, just as car and occupants were hurtling towards a junction at 170km/hour.
      The offending bonnet-cover had to be ripped off the car, costing Hirvonen more than a minute of lost time.
      Hirvonen barely managed to secure second place by one second from Citroen driver Daniel Sordo, who was also 3rd in the overall season's rankings.
     
Though there may be speculation about the possible outcome if Hirvonen had not encountered trouble on Sunday, the race was probably won and lost on Saturday morning, when Loeb opened up a lead of 22 seconds in just two special stages.
      Hirvonen was naturally bitterly disappointed at the outcome, which means a second successive runner-up spot, as he also fell short in 2008 by an appreciably larger margin of 19 points.
     
The closeness of the final points this year came as something of a surprise in the end.
      Loeb had dominated the sport in the opening rallies, winning the first five events with apparent ease, only to drop off the pace in mid-season, allowing Hirvonen - who won four rallies to Loeb's seven - the chance to creep up and actually hold a narrow one-point advantage going into the final competition.
     
Jari-Matti Latvala, who won the one remaining rally (in Sardinia) and finished 4th overall for the season, managed to bring his Ford home in 7th place, despite having a shunt on the 14th stage.
      Citroen retained the manufacturers' title in 2009 by a margin of 27 points from Ford, who were winners in 2006 and 2007.
     
Sebastien Loeb has rewritten the history books of rallying since he entered the sport in 2002.
      He won his first WRC title in 2004, and has not loosened his grip on it since then, despite the best efforts of both Mikko Hirvonen and Marcus Grönholm, who finished as runner-up in 2006 and 2007.
      With his co-driver Daniel Elena, the 35-year-old Loeb has amassed an astonishing 54 career victories and has been on the podium 82 times in 125 rally starts.
      Marcus Grönholm (30 career wins) and Spain's Carlos Sainz (26 wins) follow at a very respectful distance.
     
Finland no longer holds the whip hand in the battle with the rest of the world for rallying domination.
      The last Finnish champion was Grönholm back in 2002, and at that point Finns led in the number of World Championship titles by 13 to 11.
      In the following year, Norway's Petter Solberg took the crown, and since then Loeb has handled matters all on his own, ratcheting up the number of "foreign" champions to 18.
      Previous Finnish WRC winners have been Tommi Mäkinen and Juha Kankkunen (four times each), Marcus Grönholm (twice), and Timo Salonen, Hannu Mikkola, and Ari Vatanen.
     
Vatanen, who later became a Member of the European Parliament, has been in the news recently for his bid to take over the Presidency of FIA, motor sport's governing body, after Max Mosley steps down.
      His attempts foundered on Friday when the organisation's members voted heavily in favour of his French rival Jean Todt.
      The former Ferrari boss Todt, widely seen as the candidate of continuity while Vatanen campaigned on a platform of change, eventually won comfortably with 135 votes to 49.
     
The motor sports weekend could thus be described succinctly as: France 2, Finland 0.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Rally of Finland fulfils long-standing dream of Finnish driver Mikko Hirvonen (3.8.2009)
  FIA presidential election held in shadow of old ruler Mosley (23.10.2009)

Links:
  World Rally Championship 2009 (Wikipedia)
  WRC Official Site

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