Loeb runs risk-free strategy in Finland

Sebastien Loeb says he will not risk everything in pursuit of a second Rally Finland win in three years on next week’s eighth round of the World Rally Championship.

Loeb led the 2008 event from start to finish, eventually beating Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen by nine seconds, but last season honours were reversed as Jyvaskyla’s favourite, Hirvonen came through to beat the Frenchman and his Citroen C4 WRC by 25 seconds.

Last year’s Rally Finland was comfortably the fastest event of the season, with Hirvonen’s win taken at an average speed of 121kph. It’s those high speeds combined with the extremely specialised jumps, crests and corners on and over those crests which make Finland one of the hardest events to master.

Since the beginning of the World Rally Championship in 1973, Loeb is one of only four non-Scandinavian drivers ever to have won the event.

But winning, according to the ultra-successful Loeb, will not be uppermost in his mind next week. Arriving in Finland with four wins from seven starts this season - and 151-point lead over fellow Citroen driver Sebastien Ogier, Loeb says the pressure in Finland his diminished for him.

“I said after I won [in 2008] that I wouldn’t take that kind of risk again in Finland,” said Loeb. “That was what I felt like after the rally, but when you are in the fight you still go to it and take the risk. Like in New Zealand this year, I was driving like crazy. It depends how I feel during the rally, but sitting here now I don’t take those risks. For the three gravel rallies to come, I don’t think there’s so much pressure for me. I don’t need to win those rallies. When I start a rally I always try to fight, but for sure it’s less pressure for that.”