Sebastien Loeb closes the World Rally Car era with a win

Sebastien Loeb won his eighth race of the year in Great Britain, putting an end to an era on the World Rally Car. The French said goodbye to his C4 WRC with a win by defeating  Petter Solberg by 19.1 seconds.

In the battle for runner-up in the overall standings Jari-Matti Latvala just managed to stay ahead of Petter Solberg by two points. The Finn finished third in Great Britain after taking a podium finish away from his Ford team-mate Mikko Hirvonen on the penultimate stage. This score was sufficient to handle him second place in the standings.

After a first half of the rally where Loeb, Ogier, Latvala and Solberg covered by just a few seconds had an exciting battle for the lead, Loeb ended up having an ultimately relatively comfortable win.

After Latvala damaged a tyre on Friday afternoon and Ogier crashed on Saturday, Loeb had only to worry about Solberg. The 2003 world champion made his best efforts to close the gap to Loeb, but the speed of the C4 WRC was sufficient for the French to pull away and clinch the final win for the current generation of cars before next year's new rules.

"It was really tough, Petter was going very, very fast at the start of the rally," said Loeb. "He made nearly no mistakes, he's still really fast. I enjoyed it a lot."

After his Friday delay, Latvala still managed to steal Hirvonen top-3 finish, overtaking his team-mate with one stage to go. The result handed the Finn the second place in the championship - a satisfying achievement for a man who started the year as number two in his team.

Loeb’s win in Great Britain was the 36th of the C4 WRC, which is already part of the rallying history. The French had already claimed his seventh World title in the Rally of France, in front of his home crowd.