Loeb Takes Cyprus Win

Sebastien Loeb chalked up another win this weekend at the Rally of Cyprus.

The weekend started off with Loeb struggling to match the early pace set by Marcus Gronholm in the Ford Focus WRC on the Friday. The day ended with Loeb trailing Gronholm by 6 seconds, however Marcus was 18.1 seconds ahead after the morning session. The lost time in the afternoon was attributed to the Ford team selecting the wider tyres. This turned out to be a bad selection as Loeb took the narrower tyres and clawed the 12 seconds back.

The day also showed why it is called the car breaker. Both of the Red Bull Skodas retired with the same electrical gremlin, and the cars were running their new engines for the first time this weekend. The team chose not to run under Super Rally rules as the damage to the engines where too great. Other cars had minor issues, but most elected to continue or return under the Super Rally rules.

Saturday morning saw Loeb try to take the fight back to Gronholm. The morning however saw Marcus extend his lead to 10 seconds. But in the afternoon Loeb showed his pace and by the end of the day had passed Marcus to take the lead of the rally.

It seems that Marcus and the Ford team again made a bad choice of tyres. Marcus — after struggling in Friday on the wider tyres — decided to stick with the narrow one. Loeb had chosen to switch over to the wider BF Goodrich, and it paid off.

Stage 14 was where Marcus lost the lead, he made a mistake into a hairpin out on the stage, and this allowed Loeb to pass him. This seemed to pick Loeb's spirit's up as he finished the next stage nearly 17 seconds faster than Marcus. This, barring any problems to the Citroen, seemed to seal the first two spots.

Continued on the next page Page 1 — Page 2

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Article Author: Ashleigh Charlesworth

Ashleigh currently writes for Naked Cleaner and F1 Blog. His interest lie in Technology (of all forms) and engineering. Day to day he does network security for living (yes I AM that nerdy).

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