.png)
Sebastien Loeb could still win a 10th World Rally Championship, according to Citroen team principal Yves Matton - who plans to talk to the French superstar about a WRC return.
Loeb has a long-term ambassadorial contract with Citroen, but his deal to run in the World Touring Car Championship is up at the end of the year.Matton will be discussing the options for the 41-year-old Alsatian soon and more WRC action is one possibility.
"The main weakness of the World Rally Championship is that, for the moment, you only have two drivers who are able to be champion or to win events on a regular basis and one of them is doing the championship [Sebastien Ogier] and the other is in World Touring Cars [Loeb]," said Matton.
Loeb made a one-off appearance for Citroen at the start of the season, driving a DS 3 WRC on the Monte Carlo Rally and leading early on.
Asked whether he would be inviting Loeb back to the WRC, Matton told AUTOSPORT: "Sebastien is an ambassador for the brand for a long time into the future.
"We have to talk about what he wants to do next year.
"OK, I think he enjoys what he is doing. For sure, sometimes it's maybe not as enjoyable when you are not winning - but that's normal when you are a champion like him, you want to win each weekend and due to the fact that you have more drivers able to win in WTCC, it's more difficult than it was for him in WRC.
"We are speaking about a lot of things and we can speak about asking him back to the WRC, but I do not think he could be interested to do a full championship again."
Loeb recently tested Peugeot's 2008 DKR Dakar Rally contender and could be on the verge of committing to his first cross-country programme.
Although he would not combine Dakar with the WTCC, it could dovetail perfectly with a part-time WRC effort.
0 comments:
Post a Comment