No restart for Loeb, Raikkonen

Sebastien Loeb will not restart Rallye de France Alsace on Saturday, Citroen Racing team manager Sven Smeets has confirmed.

Loeb stopped 26 kilometres into stage three this morning with a suspected engine failure. Although the exact cause of the fault won’t be known until a full inspection is carried out at the team’s base in Paris, Smeets said Loeb would not continue on day two, despite hopes that the glitch could be traced and fixed.

“It’s impossible to continue but we have to wait to find out exactly what the problem is,” said Smeets. “We could not risk running this engine here and then having the problem come back in Spain [on the next round]. It’s a very big disappointment to retire but we have one car left with Sebastien Ogier and we want to win with him.”

The last time Loeb failed to finish a round of the world championship was in Greece in 2009, two years, three months and 17 days ago after he and co-driver Daniel Elena suffered a high-speed crash.

Like Loeb, Kimi Raikkonen, in a semi-works Citroen, will also play no further part on the world championship counter following his crash on the road section heading to stage three. Although damage to his car could have been easily fixed, the ex-Formula One world champion is already heading home.

“It’s over, Kimi has gone,” Raikkonen’s team manager Benoit Nogier said. “He preferred to stop. This is very disappointing.”