Game on for WRC stars in the Waikato

A year on from the closest-fought Rally of New Zealand of all time, the Waikato and Franklin Districts are once more the venue for a white-hot contest between Ford’s rising Finnish rally stars and the all-conquering Sebastian Loeb, defending World Champion and possibly the sport’s most “perfect” driver of all time.

The 39th Rally of New Zealand is the oldest WRC event in the Southern hemisphere. Rally organisers have confirmed a 65-car field, with Loeb starting first in his C4 WRC.

Citroen’s results speak for themselves: Manufacturers' champions in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and the power behind Sebastian Loeb's championship victories in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Over the last five years, Citroen has been the team all the others want to beat. In 2008 the reigning world champion is supported by Dani Sordo in the second C4 WRC.

Pitched against the French driver are the Finnish Ford racers, Mikko Hirvonen and rising star Jari-Matti Latvala. Hirvonen took over the top spot at the Ford team from Marcus Grönholm, his promotion to Grönholm’s spot allowing Latvala to step up to a full manufacturer WRC drive.

Behind the Citroen and Ford teams battling for the Championship lead, Subaru’s Chris Atkinson and Petter Solberg are three rallies into an all-new Impreza with podium finishes on the books but no indication yet of rally-winning form. The drivers both say there is much potential in the new car but admit it does not yet have the speed to challenge the Ford and Citroen teams.

This year’s rally marks the 15th anniversary of Subaru’s first ever WRC win, when Scottish driver Colin McRae won here in a Legacy in 1993.

The rally weekend also coincides with the McRae Gathering, a World Record-challenging 32 km - long convoy of more than 1300 Subaru road cars that travel’s from McRae’s home town of Lanark in Scotland to the team’s headquarters in Banbury, UK. The event is in memory of McRae, who died in a helicopter crash last year.

The other auto manufacturer represented at WRC level is Suzuki, making its full-season debut in 2008 with a new car, the SX4 WRC, and a driver line-up that pairs the experienced Toni Gardemeister with one of the WRC's ascendant stars, two-time Junior champion, Per-Gunnar Andersson. Early engine problems have slowed the team in a year that signals Suzuki’s emergence on the world rallying stage at the highest level.

The 2008 Kiwi WRC round, which starts in Hamilton on Friday, rekindles a heated battle between Ford and Citroen that has seesawed all year in favour of first one and then the other and evokes the duel played out here last year.

In 2007, it was Marcus Grönholm who led the Ford team in their battle against the uncanny precision of former gymnast Loeb. At Rally New Zealand, Grönholm won against Loeb by the narrowest of margins: just 0.3 seconds separated the two drivers after the final competitive stage.

Though he won here, that year ended with Marcus Grönholm pipped at the post and Loeb once more emerging the champion.

This year, with Hirvonen moving up to replace Grönholm in the top drive and Latvala joining in support, the Ford team has all-Finnish front row that strongly emphasises youth and management are banking on a changing of the guard in World Rally Championship.

It’s a concept Loeb – eight years older than Hirvonen – is not yet prepared to consider.

The lead in this year’s championship has changed six times between millimetre-perfect Frenchman Loeb, who wins the tarmac rounds, and Hirvonen, who in most cases will win on gravel.

Four times world champion Loeb has always been regarded as a tarmac expert, partly because most of his home country’s events are either completely or mainly held on tarmac.

For several seasons his weakness has been the WRC events held on gravel surfaces, where the driving style is completely different and where the Finnish drivers have traditionally excelled.

The Flying Finns – a term coined in 19060s rallying – are naturally more attuned to gravel because many of their roads are loose-surfaced and their colder months are spent on snow-covered or icy roads.

The sensation of drifting or sliding the car which comes naturally to the Finns is held by experienced rally commentators to be totally foreign to the precise style demanded by the French championship.

Imagine the consternation, then, when Sebastian Loeb won the gravel-based WRC Rally Finland – long dubbed the “Finnish Grand Prix” and perhaps the closest in style and surface character to the Rally of New Zealand.

Loeb now leads the championship on 76 points, just four more than Hirvonen. With emphatic wins at two of the 2008 championship’s newest and toughest round - Turkey and Jordan – 28-year-old Hirvonen has stepped up to fill Gronholm’s role perfectly, though he has at times expressed uncertainty that he was ready to do so.

The fast, flowing roads of Rally New Zealand offer the perfect opportunity for the all-Finnish line-up of Mikko Hirvonen/Jarmo Lehtinen and Jari-Matti Latvala/Miikka Anttila to fight back in their Focus RS World Rally Cars.

Fast, smooth and well cambered, the North Island roads thread through lush green countryside in the Waikato and Franklin District. Though it is the most remote rally of the championship, the top drivers enjoy the roads immensely.

New Zealand’s wet winter has brought about late changes to the route. While more rain would soften the roads further, the wet spell should ensure there will be no loose gravel on the surface, offering better grip for the early starters.
In dry conditions, loose gravel on the roads tends to slow the first four or five cars, who were forced to “sweep” the road and give the advantage to the cars following; dust was also a hazard.

This has meant that the driver who leads at the end of day one in dry conditions is seldom able to defend that lead on the second day. In the past this has led to drivers deliberately slowing near the end of the first day in order to get a better start order and “faster” road surface on the second day.

Loeb will lead the rally away, while Hirvonen will be second in the start order.
It is Hirvonen’s fifth start in Rally New Zealand, which is round 11 of the 15-event series. His best result came in 2006 when he finished second to team-mate Grönholm.

"The roads in New Zealand have a good rhythm to them and they are so smooth that there's no need to worry about damaging the car on rocks. The cambered corners encourage attacking driving but it's important not to position the car on the wrong side of the camber coming into a corner. If that happens then the car ends up sliding wide or perhaps not even making it round at all.”

Comparing their New Zealand results over the past few years, 34-year-old Loeb has the advantage. In 2007, Loeb was second, Hirvonen third. In 2006, Hirvonen was second, Loeb wasn't here due to injury. Loeb won in 2005, but Hirvonen didn't have a WRC drive that year. In 2004, Loeb was fourth while Hirvonen was seventh in a Subaru. Loeb was also fourth in 2003 as Hirvonen finished tenth in a Ford. Neither had rallied here before 2003.

Hirvonen says his fight back rests on weather conditions and changes made to the Ford Focus RS at the punishing Rally Deutschland.

"If the temperatures are cool and it is wet then hard compound tyres will be far from easy. There is no choice in the matter. We will all have to use that compound because those are the rules but I will need to be very careful because it will be hard to get heat into the tyres in those temperatures. It could be like the first stage in Argentina where I took risks in similar conditions and was able to make a very fast time – the downside is that the risks may not work and the car then goes off the road.

"The engine improvements on the new car that we debuted in Germany have made a difference. The tight regulations mean it's not possible to make big steps forward but the engine response has definitely improved. Everything happens a little faster than it did so I hope that will benefit us in New Zealand also. It's important to win rallies for our title challenges but if I can't do that then I have to score as many points as possible," he said.

But anything can happen on a WRC event, and there's no guarantee that either Loeb or Hirvonen will win. Hirvonen's BP Ford team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala has demonstrated he's capable of winning a world rally when he became the youngest-ever driver to win a WRC event in Norway earlier this year. Citroën's Dani Sordo – Loeb’s wingman – has taken numerous podium finishes but not yet won outright.

The 2008 Rally of New Zealand has its ceremonial start tomorrow night in Hood Street, Hamilton. There are 18 stages in total, covering 353.04km in a route of 1218.20km, and the event makes two passes over the infamous Whaanga Coast stage, once the preserve of former Ford WRC star Carlos “El Matador” Sainz.

Competition starts with the first stage on Friday, Pirongia West, at 9.18. Saturday's action starts at 9.08am on the Port Waikato special stage and Sunday morning sees competitors start the final day at Te Hutewai special stage south of Raglan.

FIA World Rally Championship for drivers
Points going into round 11, Rally New Zealand

After 10 rounds
1. Sebastien LOEB76
2. Mikko HIRVONEN72
3. Dani SORDO43
4. Chris ATKINSON40
5. Jari-Matti LATVALA34
6. Petter SOLBERG27
7. Henning SOLBERG22
8. Gigi GALLI (injured at Rallye Deutschland)17
9. Matthew WILSON12
10. Francois DUVAL11
11. Federico VILLAGRA8
12. Urmo AAVA7
13. Conrad RAUTENBACH6
14. Andreas MIKKELSEN4
15. Toni GARDEMEISTER3
16. Matti RANTANEN2
17. Jean-Marie CUOQ2
18. Per-Gunnar ANDERSSON1
19. Andreas AIGNER (Production car World Championship leader)1
20. Sebastien OGIER (Junior World Rally Championship leader)1

FIA World Rally Championship for makes
Points going into round 11, Rally New Zealand
1. CITROEN WRT123
2. BP FORD ABU DHABI WORLD RALLY TEAM115
3. SUBARU WORLD RALLY TEAM69
4. STOBART VK M-SPORT FORD RALLY TEAM51
5. MUNCHI'S FORD WORLD RALLY TEAM19
6. SUZUKI WORLD RALLY TEAM13