The outcome may have been as expected, but
Sebastien Loeb didn't have it easy in '07 - far from it.
The battle for the drivers' title went right to the wire, with Seb and his arch rival, Marcus Gronholm both in contention going into the season ending, Wales Rally GB.
It really was a two-horse race - and as Seb himself said post-GB, of the four titles he has taken this was the most hotly contested, something that in the end made it all the more sweeter.
Loeb began the season perfectly on the Rallye Monte Carlo by heading home his team-mate,
Daniel Sordo by nearly 40 seconds, while Gronholm had to make do with third.
From there it was on to the snow in Sweden and Norway and Ford's turn to take the laurels, first with Marcus and then with
Mikko Hirvonen, who notched up what was at that point only his second WRC win.
Loeb had led the championship early on, but his failure to score in Norway, after a rare mistake, cost him the lead.
He soon bounced back though and re-took the initiative following three gravel wins in succession in Mexico, Portugal and Argentina, moving back into P1 in the drivers' championship following the event in the Algarve, before extending his lead to 3 points after the trip to South America.
Next up was the Rally d'Italia and Seb looked all set to make it four from four until a mistake on the third leg, appropriately enough in SS13, put the Frenchman out and handed the maximum points to Marcus.
After that the pendulum swung in Gronholm's favour and victories in Greece and Finland saw him stretch his lead to 13 points. Furthermore while Seb cut the gap back to 8 points following his victory on the Rallye Deutschland - the sixth consecutive year he has taken the spoils on the Trier-based event, Gronholm took the margin back into double figures post-NZ, after one of the most exciting events in the WRC's history.
Indeed Marcus and Seb were at it throughout in Auckland and the battle went right to the end, with the former eventually winning by just three tenths of a second - the closest finish the sport has ever seen.
![Ford celebrate after clinching the manufacturers' championship. Rally Ireland 2007 [PIC CREDIT: BP FORD WRT]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/398742.jpg)
