Sebastien Loeb takes eighth title

Motorsport in all its properties has always been competitive and the fight for championship gets intense with every season especially with new talent coming in and the older more experienced racers trying to prove that their mettle is still not lost. Amidst all this, is the struggle to have a championship title against your name. Being able to do it once is talent, twice is elegance, thrice is expertise, but being able to do it time and again is a combination of all of the above along with the love for the sport and habit of winning. And that is exactly where Sebastien Loeb stands after his eighth drivers’ championship victory.

It wasn’t all cheers for the French driver in the 2011 season, especially after he had a not-so-good start at Rally Sweden taking a sixth place finish at the end of the rally. But the Citroen driver quickly got into the groove of things and with the help of five victories and four other podium finishes out of a 13 rally season and took the championship title for the eighth time in his career.

Theoretically, five victories and four podiums are more than enough for a title, but unfortunately for the Citroen ace Ford Abu Dhabi driver Mikko Hirvonen was right on his tail in the run for the championship. The Finnish driver could take the chequered flag in top notch only twice in the season but what really worked in his benefit were the seven podiums secured by him apart from the two victories. Eating up the lead of the champion furthermore were the Power Stage points that Hirvonen regularly managed to bag. Loeb’s tenth place finish in Rally Australia and retirement in his home rally was just enough for Hirvonen to catch up with the Citroen driver on the championship table and equal the score with two rallies to left in the season. His victory in the Spanish Rally was in fact the turning point of the season giving him a lead of eight points over Hirvonen which remained so till the season wrap up. Hirvonen’s retirement from the last rally of the season in Great Britain gave the seven-times champion another one to add to his list. 

All in all, it was a another great season that brought the eighth consecutive title since 2004 for the Citroen’s blue eyed boy, surpassing Michael Schumacher’s Formula 1 record of seven championships in his career. While there is a buzz in the motorsport world about Sebastien Loeb being the greatest driver with his success in terms of championship victories one count more than the legendary Schumacher, Loeb said, “We have won eight titles in a row and I can only have the goal to win another title next year,” he said. “There is no precise plan for the day I stop driving - at the moment the next goal is the next title. If I can make it 10 titles, I hope I can, but I don’t know. I take everything year after year. For now my goal is next year; after that I will see.”