Pirelli Reviews Star Driver Inauguration at WRC Portugal

Citroen driver Sebastien Loeb maintained his dominance of the 2009 World Rally Championship with victory on the fourth round of the series, the Rally of Portugal, which ended in Faro on Sunday afternoon (5 April). There’s nothing new there, considering Loeb’s early season form, though the Portuguese WRC stage represented a landmark worthy of note for tyre suppliers Pirelli. The Italian giant’s Star Driver scheme – undertaken with collaboration from the FIA in order to develop new young drivers – inaugurated five new drivers, all of whom will compete at a further five events. Jarkko Nikara of Finland, Nicos Thomas from Cyprus, the Czech Republic’s Martin Semerad, Mark Tapper from New Zealand and South African Jon Williams tackled Portugal as the first stage in their WRC education.

Pirelli rally manager Mario Isola said, “We are very pleased with the way this event has gone. We had no problems with the tyres. Okay, there were some punctures caused by accidents, but otherwise the hard-compound Scorpion tyre coped very well with the conditions. This has been another very strong drive from Sebastien Loeb, but once again we saw Ford pushing Citroen hard. This was also a historic rally for Pirelli with the Star Driver Scheme. This association with the FIA to help young drivers in the sport has made us very proud as a company. All five of the drivers have performed well and we now look ahead to the rest of the season with these exciting guys.”

Initially, Loeb’s Pirelli-shod Citroen C4 WRC was forced to give way to Ford drivers Jari-Matti Latvala and Mikko Hirvonen and his team-mate Dani Sordo, who all took turns at the front of the field, before the five-time world champion moved to the top of the timesheets on Saturday’s special stage eight. Loeb then reeled off the fastest times under the warm Portuguese spring sunshine to collect his 51st victory and fourth successive win in 2009.

“It’s been a good rally,” said Loeb. “The Pirelli tyre has worked well all of the time. We didn’t have any problems. Yesterday, the road was quite hard for the tyre, but we were able to look after them and make them last – they also coped well with the loose conditions on the first day. There was quite a lot of gravel and we had to do quite a lot of cleaning of the road, but the Scorpion tyre was very good.”

Loeb’s closest rival was, once again, Hirvonen. Latvala crashed spectacularly out of the lead on Friday, rolling his Ford 17 times down a mountainside after failing to slow his Focus RS WRC 08 down in time for a fourth-stage corner. Loeb’s team-mate Dani Sordo collected third place to move Citroen further ahead of Ford in the manufacturers’ race.

The Rally of Portugal qualified as a round of the Production Car and Junior World Rally Championships, both of which are supplied by Pirelli tyres. Local driver Armindo Araujo went one better than the second place he’d managed in Cyprus two weeks earlier by clinching his maiden 2009 P-WRC win in his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX. It was a similar story in the Junior category: Michal Kosciuszko was also second last time out, but won his first JWRC win of the year in his factory Suzuki.