Loeb Claims 49th Career Win on Pirelli’s New Sottozero

He’s one away from the ‘big five-oh’…Rally Norway, the sole all-snow round of the World Rally Championship, was the scene of five-time WRC champion Sebastien Loeb’s 49th career win – it also marked the first competition victory for Pirelli’s brand new generation of Sottozero studded winter tyre. Loeb’s Citroën kept the Pirelli-equipped Ford Focus RS WRC of Mikko Hirvonen at bay throughout the event, finishing the three-day rally after what Pirelli has called a ‘close battle’ with the Finnish driver.

In past years, spiked winter tyres for world championship winter rallies used to be of a special narrow size, designed to bite through soft snow to the harder surfaces underneath. This year, as part of the Pirelli supported FIA cost-cutting drive, Pirelli’s tungsten-tipped Sottozero winter tyres – each of which contains 384 studs – have been designed to fit on standard 15-inch gravel wheel rims.

Having chalked up another career win, along with its requisite trophy to burnish and place lovingly on the mantelpiece, Loeb commented “these were classic winter conditions and we had very good grip from the Pirelli Sottozeros. Sometimes, when you could see the ice, it was hard to believe just how much grip there was from the tyres.”

Despite being used on surfaces too slippery for most people to stand up on, Pirelli reports that its tyres performed well in the demanding conditions, with none of the crews reporting problems with stud-loss or punctures. “We’re delighted that our new snow tyre has made such a competitive and problem-free debut in these extremely wintry conditions, where temperatures were sometimes close to minus 30 degrees Celsius,” said Pirelli’s rally manager Mario Isola. “Although this tyre is of a different design to our asphalt and gravel rally tyres, it is still closely related to Pirelli’s road car products – underlining the fact that motorsport provides us with the ultimate research and development tool for our high-performance and all-weather road tyres.”

Pirelli was also the exclusive tyre supplier to the Production Car World Rally Championship, which got underway during Rally Norway. The showroom-class category was won by Swedish driver Patrik Sandell at the wheel of a Skoda Fabia S2000: the first time that such a vehicle has won a championship round. Using the same Pirelli Sottozero tyres as the World Rally Cars, Sandell snatched victory from local man Eyvind Brynildsen.