Sébastien Loeb: motorsport icon and absolute world rally record holder

Anyone who has ever heard the word rally must have heard the name Sébastien Loeb. For motorsport fans, they are almost synonymous. Between 2004 and 2012, he was the absolute hegemon of the sport, claiming 9 World Championship titles in a row. He has a total of 80 wins in the WRC category, making him the best driver in the history of the event.

Sébastien Loeb was born on 26 February 1974 in the east of France in Haguenau. Even the greatest driver of all time had to work his way to the top gradually. He started racing at the age of 21, at home in the junior championship. In 1996 he finished 1st in the overall classification.

A hugely important moment came a year later. Daniel Elena became his co-driver. The two were an incredible match and this perfect symbiosis lasted 25 years. The very first season with this line-up brought 3 race wins in the Peugeot 106 Cup.

In 1998, Loeb switched to the Citroën Saxo Kit Car. In the following season, he was unbeatable in the category and won his 1st title. His first start in the World Championship came the following year at the Rally de Catalunya. However, due to a crash, he did not finish the event. But he finished the next round in Corsica and won his A6 class.

The Loeb/Elena crew entered the new millennium by winning the French Gravel Championship with the Toyota Corolla WRC. He also took part in two World Championship races with this car. Probably the most important moment of his career came in 2001. Loeb became a factory driver for Citroën Sport.

He won the Junior World Championship with the Saxo Kit Car. In the adult championship, he was still gaining experience. He and the team. He’s been learning with a new racing machine, the Xsara WRC. In those years, the likes of Marcus Grönholm, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg were at the top.

Within a couple of years, Loeb had made a tremendous rise and everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before he won the most valuable championship. That time didn’t come in 2003, when Loeb dominated 3 races, but in total he was one single point short of the overall title. By the narrowest of margins, Petter Solberg won the title.

In 2004, a 15-year streak began. If you wanted to become a World Rally Champion, you had to be named Sébastien and be French. It was in this year that Loeb took the throne. With the Xsara WRC, he became world champion three times. In 2007, he switched to a Citroën C4 WRC, in which he celebrated overall victory 4 times. He won his eighth and ninth titles in the Citroën DS3 WRC.

The last one dates back to 2012. Although he was still completely sovereign that year, dominating 10 of the 14 events, he announced that he would not be competing in any more events from next season onwards, thus, of course, giving up the possibility of another title. His namesake, who is no less a quality driver, has come in and the successes Ogier has achieved so far are almost comparable to Loeb’s.

Loeb, perhaps, is not getting any older. He has convinced everyone of that in other incomplete seasons. He took a job at Citroën to further develop the brand, among the WRC cars. But sometimes he threw off his jacket and put on his racing overalls. In 2013, he took part in 4 races and managed to win 2 of them. After the last of these events, he said he was saying goodbye to big time racing.

He didn’t really race the next year. However, in 2015 there was an offer to ride the legendary Monte Carlo rally and he didn’t resist the offer, which is not unusual. But what was special, to say the least, was the speed with which Loeb entered the race. It was the first time Loeb had sat in a car on a special stage in over a year, and it was the opening RZ that he won by half a minute over reigning world champion Ogier.

The rest of the race was very evenly contested, with the French drivers jostling for seconds between them until Loeb crashed. Even so, the whole rallying world admired how fast he could go after such a long break.

In the following years, Loeb took up long-distance racing and also rallycross, where he was quite successful, but it wasn’t rallying. It’s in rallying that he still shows up irregularly today. He’s changed a number of teams and cars.

In 2015-2020 he appeared in a few events, really only sporadically. He didn’t enter at all last year, but he’s back again this season and managed to win the opening Monte Carlo. He had not Daniel Elena in the co-driver’s seat, but Isabelle Galmiche. They became the first mixed crew to win a World Championship race in 25 years.

Which is really incredible and just goes to show that Loeb is truly the greatest rally driver in history. His nine titles in a row seems like an unbeatable record. Ogier came close, but his streak was broken by Ott Tänak in 2019. Currently Ogier has 2 title seasons in a row again, but it’s hard to imagine him dominating another 7 to break the record. If he ever does, it will be many years from now.

Source:: WRC, Wikipedia