Loeb wins seventh consecutive WRC title

Sebastien Loeb has captured is seventh consecutive World Rally Championship title after taking his sixth win of the season at his home rally in France. Loeb who has been dominating the rally championship for a while now further extended his record of consecutive titles.

As Citroën has been unstoppable on asphalt in recent years, a win from Loeb was already expectable. Another result rather than that one would definitely be a shocker. Over the first half of the rally the Frenchman established a comfortable lead of 40 seconds and just had to control and manage his advantage to clinch the sixth win of the season and secure the title celebrations.

Thanks to the Rally of France’s new location, Loeb was able to celebrate his seventh title in his home town of Haguenau.

"For sure it makes it really special - it's incredible for me to win the seventh title here in Haguenau," said Loeb, whose win also clinched the manufacturers' title for Citroen. "I couldn't expect so many people here. To win the title here is the best thing that could happen this year."

In France there was only place for Citroëns on the podium. Dani Sordo offered Citroën’s factory team a one-two finish. Petter Sloberg’s car from team Solberg Citroën took third place.

At the end of the rally Sordo had a comfortable margin over his followers, but earlier in the weekend he took part of a four-car battle for second position.

Another French Sebastien Orgier, the only man that still had a mathematic possibility of taking the title away from Loeb finished sixth after he had to stop because of a broken suspension on Saturday afternoon, when he was lying third.

With small errors and delays Petter Solberg and Jari-Matti Latvala couldn’t fight until the end of the rally for second spot. Nevertheless Solberg was satisfied with his sixth podium finish of the season, with Latvala happy with several stage wins, making a good improvement on his asphalt speed.

As for Mikko Hirvonen, the Finnish driver had a poor run in France, struggling the whole weekend. Ford’s driver lacked a lot of confidence in his car and only managed to finish in a distant fifth position.

Besides securing his individual title, thanks to Loeb’s and Sordo’s results, Citroën also secured the constructors WRC title.