Three questions to Xavier Mestelan-Pinon

The Citroën DS3 WRC has won eight of the nine rallies run so far this season. How do you explain this success?

“This overall result has given a great deal of satisfaction to the Citroën Racing technicians and engineers who have never stopped working to make the car quick and reliable. It’s the fruit of painstaking work based on ten years’ experience at the top level in rallying. But this score doesn’t really tell the truth about the fight put up by our rivals. Quite a few rallies have been won by seconds, - or even less! We’ve never come out on top, easily and our rivals are never far behind in terms of sheer performance. We’ve managed to make the difference because of our reliability as none of the Citroën Total World Rally Team cars have been eliminated by mechanical problems.”

Has the DS3 WRC received many updates since the start of the season?

“Because of the technical regulations we can’t update the car as quickly as in the past. But we still have a few areas left and we can have options homologated every three months. We’ve already used two of the five jokers granted by the FIA for the car’s first year. These modifications have been made to the suspension and the steering. Where the engine’s concerned, we’re now working more in view of 2012. We have evolutions aimed at improving the overall performance and reliability as we’ll have to do six rallies with the same engine!”

Rally Australia will be run over a new route. How have you prepared for this race down under?

“We’ve defined the car’s setup according to the type of weather we’re expecting and the layout of the stages. According to the information we’ve collected we can expect very quick and relatively car-friendly stages. Even so, each rally has its own special features and we don’t exactly know what we’ll have to cope with. As in all the rallies the race engineers will go through the stages to assess the difficulties of the route from a purely technical point of view. If necessary, we can make some adjustments during the preparation of the cars.”