Wednesday 17th November 2010

Rally GB: Loeb Ends WRC Era With Victory

PHer Mark Mullen reports from the final outing for the current generation of WRC cars

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The 2010 season marks the end of an era for the current WRC cars. Regulations changes next season will see this year's S2000 cars become the WRC car, their 2000cc engines replaced by a 1600cc turbocharged unit.

These changes, designed to reduce costs and encourage other manufacturers to enter the sport, will see MINI enter the Countryman WRC car, a return to rallying after a long break for the company. The new breed of cars is likely to produce around 300bhp and will remain four-wheel drive.

Seven times World Champion Sebastien Loeb ended the current WRC era in fine fashion with a victory on the Welsh mountains of Rally GB. He had already claimed the 2010 championship on home soil on the Rally France at the beginning of October. The French rally star brought home his Citroen C4 WRC over 19 seconds ahead of rival C4 driver Petter Solberg to the ceremonial finish in Cardiff.

Rally veteran Solberg this year returned to WRC as a privateer; his third place in the championship overall is a tremendous result.

"To beat the factory team is bloody difficult but I have done my best and pushed really hard," said Solberg, formerly a works driver for the Subaru World Rally Team and 2003 WRC Champion.

A crash 500 metres from the end of SS8, Radnor, ended the charge of Loeb's fellow Frenchman Sebastien Ogier who was pushing hard to finish runner up in the championship "I came too fast in corner and that was it. The conditions were as slippery as I expected them to be. I'm stupid."

The crash put Ogier back to fourth in the championship behind Jari-Matti Latvala and Petter Solberg.

In addition to the WRC cars this year's Wales Rally GB also had the Welsh forests and mountains echoing to the sounds of some altogether more classic vehicles, as a two-day National B event, Wales Rally GB National, ran on the Saturday and Sunday. Entries included the iconic Metro 6R4, Ford Escort Cosworth and of course the old favourite Mk2 Escort.

[LongLiveTazio]

Great write-up!

[LongLiveTazio]

Mikey G said:

Actualy thats a bargain, anyone care to work out the cost per circuit mile of a top end F1 team?.... I'm guessing a figure of ten times that!

Still, £4k is a lot and I used to moan about £400 entry fees...

Okay, seeing as I'm incredibly bored:

Let's take this year's double champions, Red Bull. They have apparently invested £157m in the past year, which includes racing and research and development.

Now let's take 3 different circuits and calculate the average number of miles:

Monaco - 78 laps & 2.075 miles = 161.85 miles

Silverstone - 52 laps & 3.667 miles = 190.684 miles

Singapore - 61 laps & 3.148 miles = 192.028 miles

The average of those makes roughly 181 miles per Grand Prix.

So there's 19 races on the calendar, which is 6878 miles (2 cars).

Works out at, rounding down, £22,800 per mile.