Sébastien Loeb himself decided not to participate in the second round of the World Rally Championship.
In the wake of a Monte-Carlo Rally where "the planets were not aligned", Sébastien Loeb disappeared Monday from the entry list for the Rally of Sweden, where he would normally have been present. The announcement was made by the Hyundai team, the nine-time World Champion giving way to Craig Breen without the South Korean manufacturer providing explanations other than elusive. Loeb gave them in person: his boss Andrea Adamo asked him the question directly on the evening of the Monte-Carlo and the Alsatian grabbed the pole.
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Hyundai replaces Loeb for Rally Sweden
The context is twofold for the Frenchman, who is obviously upset by this difficult first rally, painfully completed in fifth place and with times that are far too far from the best. "It was certainly not the rally we were hoping for, the whole weekend was difficult," he said. "Everything was fine until the second day but then we were overwhelmed." This poor performance is compounded by the difficult conditions that threaten the Rally Sweden. The snow is there for the moment and the holding of the event is not even assured to date. This was enough to convince Loeb to pass his turn.
"So I didn't particularly want to go there, but since it was decided like that with the team, I intended to respect the commitment," he revealed in an interview with the newspaper L'Équipe. "Andrea probably felt something and, on Sunday evening, he asked me if I wanted to do Sweden. He told me that I was doing as I felt, but that I had to decide quickly because the limit for a crew change was this Monday. It didn't take me more than twenty seconds to decide. "
Sébastien Loeb, Daniel Elena, Hyundai Motorsport Hyundai i20 WRC Coupe
This decision taken in his soul and conscience, Sébastien Loeb suspected that it would cause a stir until it was explained. "I knew people were going to react by saying that I was fucked outside!" loose there. Reactions that stir little the character, who preferred to trust his feelings, also recalling that his commitment to Hyundai was to "move the team forward" and that he refused to be "a brake" in such a case figure: "Going to Sweden to run in crappy conditions, while the others are going to ride like savages and it was going to have to be pinned down to try to do something, I didn't really feel it".
Sébastien Loeb's partial program is again structured around six rallies this year, and his absence in Sweden does not call this number into question for the moment. On the other hand, the Monte-Carlo came to reinforce the conclusions that the pilot was already drawing at the end of October, when he questioned his performance, which had become better on land than on asphalt. This trend could therefore provoke a change of approach to define the rest of the season. "We may be thinking about orienting the program on dirt heats, because it's obvious that I can't make time with the i20 on asphalt," concludes Loeb.
https://fr.motorsport.com/wrc/news/l...suede/4677524/