Loeb expects exciting WRC season

Rally fans around the world are set for an exciting season of world championship action, according to the man who has dominated the sport for almost a decade.

With 15 days to go until the start of the new campaign in Sweden, seven-time world champion Sebastien Loeb says the introduction of the new technical regulations will create an air of unpredictability and result in an ‘exciting’ battle for title glory.

French hero Loeb, who is chasing an unprecedented eighth world crown, will drive Citroen’s DS3 WRC this year. He is one of 13 drivers who have got their hands on one of the new generation World Rally Cars for Rally Sweden, which opens the new season in Karlstad from 10-13 February.

Speaking at Citroen Racing’s 2011 launch earlier this week, the 36-year-old Loeb said: “When the regulation doesn’t change between the years and you have one car, which is stronger than the others in all the previous seasons, at the start of the next season it won’t be so different than it was before so could expect to continue in the same way.

“Even for us it is difficult to know if what we have done is good or not because you cannot compare this car to the C4. It’s not like when we passed from the Xsara to the C4, where the regulation was stable and you could compare one car to the other on this surface or the other. This situation is completely different.”

Loeb is currently carrying out a four-day test in Sweden with team-mate Sebastien Ogier. He has won the snow rally on one previous occasion when he triumphed in 2004, the year of his first world title triumph.