LOEB WINS AGAIN IN TURKEY
Now that the dust has settled - but not in the skies over Europe - the Rally of Turkey comes into focus. On paper, it was another Loeb victory, another 10 points, another step in the inexorable march towards the Frenchmans seventh title
In fact, the most deserving winner was neither of the two title protagonists: it was probably Citroen Junior Team driver Sebastien Ogier. The 2008 Junior World Rally Champion took the lead on SS3 and then maintained it even on the second day, when he was running first on the road. That traditional handicap was partly negated by the fact that some sections of the stages were on asphalt but this needs to be seen in context. In total only 12% of the 358.84-kilometre competitive route was on tar: Turkey was hardly a genuine mixed-surface event.
Then came SS15, when Ogier’s front-left tyre exploded, forcing him to stop and change it.
What the Rally of Turkey does show is this: the fact that Ogier has lagged slightly behind the established frontrunners on the three previous rallies is because he has less experience, not any less talent. He really is that good, and Dani Sordo - the current incumbent of the second Citroen factory seat - must now be feeling as uncomfortable as a turkey in the run up to Christmas.
Sordos cause won’t have been helped by the fact that he threw away a near certain podium place almost within sight of the finish, after he slid wide on a muddy corner of SS21 and broke a suspension wishbone. To add insult to injury, a number of other competitors made the same mistake but used Sordo’s car as a convenient brake.
With stages that were brand new to the World Rally Championship, Turkey was a great leveler that emphasised talent without the background noise of experience. No wonder that Loeb won, and it’s equally no surprise that the real raw talents like Ogier did well too.
If there’s one lesson to be learned though, it is that this years championship is even closer than we thought - and it goes back to exactly what Hirvonen said. He made the point halfway through the second day that there were four people who could win the (Loeb, Petter Solberg, himself and Sordo), all of whom were separated by around 15 seconds.
As the man himself said: “This is a win that gives me a lot of pleasure, because the outcome of the battle was indecisive for a very long time”
The people who were beginning to write off Kimi Raikkonen will have to think again too. The Finn made a big step forward in Turkey, not only steering clear of mistakes but also pulling away from a few drivers with plenty more experience. Let’s not forget that this was only his ninth-ever rally of any description, and that before Turkey he had only ever completed two gravel rallies in the Citroen. So to set a time in the top 10 on every stage and finish fifth overall was quite an achievement.
Another star in the making seems to be the latest arrival in the Junior World Rally Championship: Thierry Neuville. Despite only testing his Citroen C2 S1600 for 20 kilometres before the start, Neuville was only 7.5 seconds off the lead after day one. Unfortunately a differential failure on the second day, for which there was no spare, deprived him (and us) of the chance to see what the young Belgian could do. His co-driver Nicolas Klinger commented: ?It’s incredible as this was only his second rally on gravel. He’s the real deal, you wait and see...?
The biggest story of the rally though was nothing to do with the sport: instead it was what was going on in the skies. Given that this is the biggest period of disruption in air travel since the second World War, and that the World Rally Championship by definition works on logistics, it posed a major problem for the competing crews - albeit one that the drivers didn’t have to think about until Sunday afternoon.
Behind the scenes, all sorts of frantic work went on to repatriate more than 500 people from all the various teams. Citroen organised a fleet of buses to take the team back to Paris; a journey of around 39 hours.
For Loeb and Raikkonen, it was the somewhat less stressful matter of finding a place to land their private planes; but even so it’s hardly what they are used to. Turkey was a rally that will be remembered by everybody for quite some time to come.