Rallye de France Alsace was held during the first week-end in October. It was a very interesting race marked by two major events. During the power stage Sébastien Ogier overtook Thierry Neuville — his main competitor and the only potential opponent in championship struggle — thus becoming the World Champion. Such emotional pressure left its mark making Ogier get lost in the crowd on the first race day so the major struggle started between Neuville, Dani Sordo and Jari-Matti Latvala. But a champion is a champion. By the second day, junior Seb braced himself as one shouldn’t be showing bad results at home, and little by little started showing “who’s the boss in the house”. At first, Sordo, Latvala and Loeb were keeping his company. Neuville left the battle due to a tire puncture which happened on the opening stage. But then Ogier took the lead and scored his seventh victory in the Championship.
Multiple WRC champion Sébastien Loeb wanted to end his WRC career by a home race in Alsace. It should have been his swansong. But it was not in his cards. A mistake made in one of the turns on a wet track led to a slide and rolling off the road. Thousands of Loeb’s fans gathered in his native village of Oberhoffen on the stage in Haguenau. The ace apologized to them for the fact that he was not able to bring them joy by his last home event. Nevertheless Loeb deserved a right to go through the Haguenau test for the second time in an open top car. The pilot thanked all his fans for supporting him during all the competitions.
Meanwhile the upcoming RallyRACC-Rally de Espana which will be held on October 24–26 is already stirring up a dispute. Having both asphalt and gravel stages leads to a paradoxical situation. On the WRC gravel stages the pilots choose the starting position according to qualifying results. The pilots who start first and sweep the gravel off the road making the track slippery suffer a great speed loss. On the contrary, on the asphalt stages the pilots start according to their position in the Championship. The first asphalt stage in Spain receives no criticism but the fact that its winners will have to take the burden of clearing the gravel part of the track in the end of the races does not make the teams happy. FIA has already refused to make any changes in the race schedule and teams’ principals are really concerned about the tactical games.
