The Citroën Total World Rally Team and its two crews will start Rally Sweden, the first round of the 2010 FIA World Rally Championship, with their motivation at an all-time high! Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena will be gunning for a seventh consecutive title, while Dani Sordo and Marc Marti will be the key men in Citroën’s conquest of a sixth crown in the Manufacturers’ World Championship.
The FIA World Rally Championship will kick off after a 3-month break on the icy roads of Sweden. The greater part of Rally Sweden, still run around Karlstad, will take place in the Hagfors region, where the service park will be located.
The specials, run on frozen gravel, are wide and fast. Sébastien Loeb does more than just defend his corner on this type of surface on which the Scandinavian drivers are much more at home than their Latin rivals. Remember that the six-time world champion scored his first victory on a surface other than asphalt in Sweden in 2004. Last year, he also won in Norway in his C4 WRC. Despite this, Seb doesn’t feel that he is the favourite for the opening round. “I like starting the season with this rally but it looks like the conditions are going to be very difficult (see further on). You just have to stay on the road, which isn’t all that easy when I think back to the 2008 rally. My only aim is to rack up another world title, but the way last season panned out shows that you can’t count your chickens before they’re hatched!”
Dani Sordo’s season began a few days ago. In order to get back in the groove, the young Spaniard raced in the Arctic Lapland Rally, the opening round of the Finnish Championship. It was a success, as he set all the fastest times in the rally. “It was a great way of boosting my confidence on this surface. Even though I didn’t really have any rivals there’s nothing like competition to get you back into the right rhythm and feel the reflexes coming back! Unlike a test session where we use the same route so we know it by heart, each special was a new challenge for me and I had to analyse the behaviour of the C4 WRC. The route was very similar to that of Rally Sweden so I feel absolutely ready.”
Dani’s main aim hasn’t changed in relation the previous seasons, which is a crucial factor in the conquest of the Manufacturers’ title. “You have to be quick, consistent and score the maximum number of points in each rally. That’ll still be the case in 2010 but I want to push even harder. I’m really determined to win my first WRC rally this year. I know I can do it, and whether it comes in one of the asphalt rounds or the gravel events that I like very much such as Mexico, New Zealand or Portugal, doesn’t make any difference.”
“You don’t change a winning team so we’re tackling 2010 with the same crew as the previous seasons. The final year of the World Rally Cars looks like being a great one for the World Championship - and for Citroën - which has a real dream team,” adds Olivier Quesnel, the Citroën Racing Team Principal. “The drivers of the five C4 WRCs entered this season have all been word champions in motor racing: namely, Sébastien Loeb, Dani Sordo, Sébastien Ogier, Kimi Raïkkönen, and Petter Solberg with his own team. Difficult to do much better!”
