Thread: Citroen Rules at Rallye Deutschland

Once more Citroen completely dominated Rallye Deutschland, not only winning outright (a record eight successive times now and a record seven times for the same driver, Sebastien Loeb), but also the Junior WRC category as well for the fourth time running, this time with Sebastien Ogier. Their C4 WRCs finished first and second, winning every stage before easing their pace on the final day. Ford, however, had a dismal rally. Mikko Hirvonen was unable to match the uncanny high speed consistency of Sebastien Loeb on highly changeable grip levels, while team mate Jari-Matti Latvala had a rally which he will want to forget, with many errors through the full three day event.

Ford came to Germany euphoric with no fewer than 13 works or private Focuses competing but suffered badly in the world championship stakes. Ford had sold a car to Francois Duval's sponsor, but still nominated him as a points scoring driver for the independent Stobart VK team. This meant the official BP Ford Abu Dhabi personnel could not give team orders to Duval and were mortified when the talented but traditionally rebellious Belgian denied them and their driver much needed championship points in a car they built.

The championship came back to the black stuff for the first time since Monte Carlo, at the start of the season. There were two main pre event topics: the need for Pirelli to supply alternative compound control tyres, on an event where weather predictions are usually notoriously fickle and the extent to which control tyres in fact slow down the cars. Tyre decisions in fact did not centre so much on whether it would be wet or dry, more on whether soft tyres were better than hard when it was cool in the mornings. For the longer stages harder tyres were preferred by most drivers, particularly on the two 30km afternoon stages on the Saturday on military ground. And incredibly the speed of development by the Citro ens and Fords seemed almost exactly to match the performance constraints offered by the single supplier tyres.

Loeb stormed out of the starting blocks, revelling in the changeable surfaces on the Friday morning. Only when his team-mate Dani Sordo surprisingly chose harder tyres that afternoon, instead of staying like other drivers on soft tyres, was Hirvonen able to match the speed of either of the Citroens. The 23km Grafschaft Veldenz stage (2 and 5) proved a critical battle field between Sebastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen. In 2007 Loeb set a record time here of 13m12.4s, but with the new Pirelli control tyres he was almost able to match that time this year on the first time through the stage. He covered the stage in 13m14.4s, only two seconds slower.



Hirvonen, however, was over six seconds slower. On the second time through Loeb broke his record by 0.1 second (l3m12.3s) while Hirvonen equalled the old record. This emphasised just how much of a miserable start Hirvonen had to the rally, ending the first loop of stages over a quarter minute behind. While itwas clear Citroen's and Ford's development was overcoming all the built-in performance deficit of the control tyres it also showed how critical are even tenths of seconds, Loeb's lead¬ing margin was 17.7 seconds after stage 4, 18.8 after stage 5 and 19.9 after stage 6.

Ford's horrendous event continued with Gigi Galli having a big accident on stage five. His Stobart team Ford Focus WRC encountered a rock beside the track, on the line where he was cutting a bend and the car was propelled off the road and impacted on a tree on the driver's side. Galli and his co driver Giovanni Bernacchini were hospitalised. Latvala, gradually speeding up after an early set-up error, went off the road on the second day when he misjudged the positioning of speed-reducing chicanes, rolled and landed off the road and needed help to get the car back on the stage. In the after noon Hirvonen suffered a puncture which dropped him from his secure third place, behind Duval.

On the final day Duval took full advantage of the reduced pace of the leading Citroens to score four fastest times and cemented his third place, but then he broke a shock absorber on the way to the downtown superspecial in Trier. This was territory Ford's management could not handle on top of their worries about urgently needing to find a replacement driver for Galli following his first day accident. Citroen have now gained the tactical high ground in the Manufacturers' championship and Sebastien Loeb, of course, in the Drivers' series. One more smashed record for Loeb (no driver had won the same world championship event seven years run¬ning), one more long face for Ford.