Pirelli's 150th Win in the FIA World Rally Championship in Loeb & Elena's Citroen |
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The final day of the Rallye Deutschland was characterised by a last-minute charge from Duval-Pivato (Ford Focus WRC-Pirelli), who defended their third place well from Mikko Hirvonen, driving another Ford. Loeb controlled the rally from start to finish, claiming his seventh consecutive win in Germany and giving Pirelli its 150th victory in the FIA World Rally Championship. Dani Sordo took an excellent second place, also driving a Citroen C4 WRC running on
PZero tyres.
Trier, 17 August 2008 – Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena have won the Rallye Deutschland, round 10 of the FIA World Rally Championship, for the seventh time in seven years. |
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On the final day of the event, the number one Citroen crew – using Pirelli PZero tyres – was simply able to control the advantage gained over the previous two days, backed up by their team mates, Sordo-Marti. The stages that were run today saw Francois Duval (Ford Focus WRC-Pirelli) make his mark on the rally. The Belgian set a string of quick times to guarantee himself a third place finish, despite the charge from the factory Ford Focus WRC of Hirvonen-Lehtinen. |
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Loeb commented: “The PZero tyres performed very well: particularly the soft compound covers, which stood up to temperatures that were often warmer than those predicted. On the dry, I can conclude that both the compounds supplied by Pirelli worked extremely effectively. Now I am curious to see how these tyres will react to wet asphalt. Unlike most occasions in the past, we didn’t see any rain at all on the Rallye Deutschland this year.” The seventh win of the year for the factory Citroen C4 WRC crew of Loeb and Elena is also the 150th win for Pirelli in the FIA World Rally Championship. The first win for the Italian firm was on the Rally Poland back in 1973, thanks to the Fiat Abarth 124 Spider of Achim Warmbold and Jean Todt. Mario Isola, Pirelli's Rally Manager, commented: “This 150th World Rally Championship victory obtained here in Germany is a magnificent tribute to Pirelli's enduring involvement in road racing, which has spanned several decades. Since 1973 we have been supplying tyres and winning rallies all over the world, with a huge variety of different cars and conditions. These wins have come both thanks to great champions and also lesser-known drivers, but it is a real pleasure to see this landmark victory taken by Loeb, who is obviously already one of the greatest rally drivers of all time. On the purely technical side, I’m pleased to see that we’ve maintained (and sometimes surpassed) the pace of previous rallies held here in Germany. Back then we were constantly developing the tyres and using anti-deflation mousse – a situation that is very different to the one we have now under the new control tyre rules.” |
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