Citroen to discuss WRC return with Loeb

Citroen Racing boss Yves Matton will talk to Sebastien Loeb before Rally Finland to see if he wants to do more rallies for the troubled squad in the second half of the WRC season.

Tempting Loeb out of retirement is one option Matton is considering as he seeks to turn around a miserable start to 2013, during which Volkswagen has pulled ahead in the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships.

Matton made the admission at Rally Italia Sardinia, shortly after his lead driver Mikko Hirvonen crashed out from second place while trying to narrow a 40sec gap to Volkswagen’s Sebastien Ogier.

As he makes the transition from rallying to racing, nine-time World Rally Champion Loeb was scheduled to tackle only four WRC events for Citroen this year, with a final appearance on his home Rallye de France-Alsace in October.

“I haven’t spoken to him yet but for sure at the half of the season I will speak again with Sebastien to see if he has the motivation to do maybe one or two rallies more,” said Matton.

“It depends a lot on what we [Citroen] will do in the future, if we will be involved in the touring cars or not. In the following days or weeks then we will have an answer and we will see with Seb what we can do.”

Loeb has a busy racing programme this year, and next week will tackle the Pikes Peak hillclimb. However, after winning Rally Argentina earlier this season he didn’t rule out more WRC outings.

Matton that that in the meantime his team would be working hard to find improvements before the next WRC round in six weeks time.

“Sardinia, Finland and Germany are very important rallies for us to keep as close as possible with Volkswagen and on the first of these three we have not done a good rally and are losing points,” he said.

“For sure we are not happy for the moment and after this weekend. We are not really successful. In too many situations when we can come back in the points we are not doing it, like this weekend, due to mistakes from our drivers, or from us. We cannot achieve it for the moment.

“Finland is a very specific rally and last year Mikko and Seb Loeb were fighting for first and second for most of the rally. I hope that experience will help us this year.”