With nine WRC drivers’ titles, a Junior World Championship and 80 wins in WRC rallies, Sébastien Loeb is by far the most successful rally driver of all time in terms of numbers. He has also won rounds of the World Rallycross and World Touring Car Championships, finished second overall at Le Mans and tested for Formula 1. AUTOMOBILSPORT spoke to the all-rounder at an event in the South of France. Loeb’s long-time partner Richard Mille had invited us to chat with him about his career and the topics he is passionate about, in a quiet atmosphere on the outskirts of Saint-Tropez.
AUTOMOBILSPORT: Where do you think your talent and your passion for motorsport come from?
Loeb: I don’t come from a motorsport background. As a kid, I did a lot of gymnastics, I was quite good at that, but then I became more interested in riding mopeds with my friends, even some races. But my real goal was to get my driving licence and to drive a car, which is what I did when I was 18, and with the help of my grandmother, I could buy my first car, a Renault 5 GT Turbo. I didn’t have a particular passion for cars, but a passion for driving. And then I started to drive on the road. I never wanted to go racing or anything, but I could spend an hour just driving two corners in the middle of a field, over and over again, because I wanted to take these corners perfectly. Just challenging myself. I was only happy when I had the feeling it was perfect.
Then I saw something about this project ‘Rallye Jeunes’, which was organised by the French federation and a manufacturer, which at the time was Peugeot, and everybody in France under 25 years of age could enter. You paid a small fee, it would be around 15 euros today, and you were in the regional selection. The winners of the regional selections went on to the national final, and the winner of that earned a rally season. I just wanted to battle with some other guys, but I won the regional selection, I went to the final and there, I posted the fastest time of the day. Even the journalists were certain that I had won and that I would do the championship, but there were judges who decided as well, it was not just about the time. And they decided that another driver had won.
The following year, same story. I did the selection again, won, went to the final and dominated that, but at the end, I made a mistake, so again, no prize. Still, somebody came up to me and said, ‘If you are the first of 15,000 for two years in a row, you are something special, so I will help you.’ And he provided me with a car and I started rallying. That was Dominique Heintz, with whom, later on, I set up Sébastien Loeb Racing, our own team. And he is still a good friend. Had it not been for him, I wouldn’t be here.
He ran me for the first three seasons, and in the third season, I won the title in the Saxo Kit Car Cup, a category in which everybody had identical cars, and that is how Citroën became interested in me. They provided me with a car to do the French gravel championship that I won, then I did the Junior World Championship with Citroën that I won, then the French championship that I won, and then they gave me a car for the world championship round in Italy, and I finished second in my first official WRC round. From that moment, I had the opportunity to go to every team. So that is how it all started.
AUTOMOBILSPORT: You were up against some really good drivers, including Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz ... Whom do you rate as the strongest driver you competed against?
Loeb: …
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by Robert Weber and René de Boer
Photographs: McKlein, Richard Mille/Mathieu Bonnevie