Citroen team leader
Sebastien Loeb remains upbeat following the inaugural World Rally Championship event in Jordan, despite missing out on an almost certain victory.
Loeb had finished the opening day in second place, narrowly behind his team-mate, Dani Sordo. However, on Saturday he immediately asserted his authority, grabbing the lead in the opening test and then proceeding to win the following two to build a 34 second lead.
Things were looking promising for the Frenchman, but then disaster struck and he was sidelined in a bizarre head-on collision with
Conrad Rautenbach's similar C4 WRC car.
The accident occurred on a narrow two-way access road leading to and from SS11, the 15.19 kilometre-run through Shuna 1.
Although nobody was injured, both drivers' were forced out on the spot and while Seb rejoined on day three and fought his way up from 20th to 10th, to take the final manufacturers' point, he was unable to get any drivers' points and consequently slips back behind
Mikko Hirvonen in the race for the 2008 drivers' crown, now 5 points adrift.
Despite ending the first third of the season behind the Ford man though, Loeb was happy with the event and with nine fastest stages times to Mikko's four, you can see why.
"It was especially useful today [Sunday - to re-start] to see how our Pirelli Scorpion tyres stood up to the long stage. There was also a chance we could score points for Citroën [as we did].
"We are now five points behind in the Drivers' standings but they won't be impossible to make up.
"There is still a long way to go this season and the way our C4 performed here was very encouraging."
Asked about
that incident in more detail, Loeb added that while it was an 'enormous shame', it was just one of those things.
"We had just come out of the eleventh stage and were heading for the following test when we collided with another car which was on its way to SS11," he explained on day 2.
