Originally Posted by Prisoner Monkeys
If Loeb does stop, then Citroen will no doubt have a few potential candidates in mind. I suspect they're setting Mikko Hirvonen up as Loeb's successor - and Hirvonen's move to Citroen only really makes sense if he's been promised a team leadership role once Loeb moves on - so what they're really going to be looking for is someone who can fill Hirvonen's role as the number two driver. Neuville seems to be the most-likely candidate, but I wouldn't put it past Citroen to try and poach Ostberg or maybe Novikov.
Citroen's biggest problem is that they don't really offer anything in the way of support for customer teams. Outside the Citroen WRT, only a handful of customers have appeared in DS3s compared to the other teams. There have never been more than five WRC-spec Citroens on any entry list; for example, they fielded Loeb, Hirvonen, van Merksteijn and al-Attiyah in Portugal. Compare that to Ford, who had nine WRC-spec Fiestas - for Latvala, Solberg, Tanak, Novikov, Oliveria, Kuipers, Ostberg, Ketomaa, and Prokop - at the same event. They really need to knuclke down and find someone who can run a customer Citroen team or two at as many events as possible in 2013 if they want to stand any chance of finding some talent to move up into their works cars. They need to look to the junior categories and pick up drivers like Breen, Guerra, Kosciuszko, Paddon, Evans and Meeke, and nurture them, because the alternative is to try and steal drivers away from the other teams - and with Volkswagen entering in 2013, and with Mini hopefully stepping up their involvement (Prodrive screwed up, but the Araujo-Nobre combination hasn't worked at all), they're going to be caught with their pants down before long. Ferrari did exactly the same thing in Formula 1 when they missed the boat on establishing young driver programs, and they were forced to watch as their rivals picked up the likes of Hamilton and Vettel. It was years before they were able to get the program up and running and find anyone of their own (Perez), and in the meantime, they have been stuck running the uncompetitive Felipe Massa. If Citroen aren't careful, they're going to find themselves in exactly the same position. They're at the front at the moment, but that just means that everyone else has more to gain by snaring young talent.