What a Monte Carlo Rallye – four days, 16 ace special stages and 425.93Km of drama in classic, tricky Winter alpine conditions! And what an incredible start to the 2013 season – mainly thanks to the injection of excitement the arrival of VW Motorsport and Sebastian Ogier/Jari-Matti Latvala gave in the new VW Polo R WRC. It not only looked amazing, but did the business – setting out its stall with an incredible (Ogier) win on SS1 (in VW's first ever WRC event!), and staking claim to an amazing second place, with Ogier driving the doors off the new car, to come in behind the amazing Sebastian Loeb, taking his unreal 77th WRC victory and 7th Monte Carlo Rallye win, by 1m39s in his Citroen Total Abu Dhabi DS3. And Dani Sordo in his Citroen DS3 WRC was third. Incredible! Roll on the rest of 2013 and the WRC.
After a great Sebastian fight for first on day one and two, the final day was loaded with drama too, ending up with two stage cancellations – after three of the top seven – Evgeny Novikov, Jari-Matti Latvala and Juho Hanninen – crashed out in very slippery, icy conditions on the legendary Col de Turini. And you can see Jari-Matti Latvala's spectacular shunt in the video above. Ouch!
The cool, calm, collected and uber-talented Loeb said to WRC: "I’m always happy when I win, and Monte-Carlo is one of the most exciting rallies I’ve done. This one was really, really difficult. The conditions were extreme compared to what we have usually and winning wasn’t easy."
And the amazing Sebastian Ogier said to WRC: "I’m so happy, it’s like a victory for me. I’m a competitor and I’ve never been happy to finish second but this weekend it was really the target, and to start the season like this is amazing. I’ve been waiting for one year, I’ve done so many tests and it was frustrating sometimes, and now here we are with the Polo on the pace already."
Bring on Rally Sweden, the only true snow event of the WRC year, February 7-10th. We only wish Loeb was up for the whole year, not just four events – giving him the chance of 10 WRC crowns. But, I guess he's already proved he is the best rally driver of all time... awesome.
The cool, calm, collected and uber-talented Loeb said to WRC: "I’m always happy when I win, and Monte-Carlo is one of the most exciting rallies I’ve done. This one was really, really difficult. The conditions were extreme compared to what we have usually and winning wasn’t easy."
And the amazing Sebastian Ogier said to WRC: "I’m so happy, it’s like a victory for me. I’m a competitor and I’ve never been happy to finish second but this weekend it was really the target, and to start the season like this is amazing. I’ve been waiting for one year, I’ve done so many tests and it was frustrating sometimes, and now here we are with the Polo on the pace already."
Bring on Rally Sweden, the only true snow event of the WRC year, February 7-10th. We only wish Loeb was up for the whole year, not just four events – giving him the chance of 10 WRC crowns. But, I guess he's already proved he is the best rally driver of all time... awesome.
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