Sébastien Loeb after his disappointment in Morocco: “It’s a bad start in the W2RC championship”

Sébastien Loeb (Bahrain Raid Xtreme) will not win the Rally of Morocco in its third participation. The Frenchman came close to victory in 2017 (2nd with Peugeot ), but he will not even get on the final podium after having lost all hope of doing well in the penultimate stage, between Laâyoune and Tan-Tan this Wednesday, October 5.

Step 4 ❌

We encountered a mechanical problem at kilometer 127 and we were unable to repair…

We will leave tomorrow to try to score the 5 scratch points and thus hope to save the furniture in the quest for the title in # W2RC 💪🏻 pic.twitter.com/Ti3R93Dj19

- Sébastien Loeb (@SebastienLoeb) October 5, 2022

The English 4×4 of the nine-time world rally champion (WRC) suffered immediate irreparable damage, near km 127 (out of a total of 346). “We lost power steering,” he declared once he returned to the bivouac in an SUV rented by his team. “A DA pressure loss alarm (power steering) came on, then the steering became harder and harder. There were 200 km left, it was not possible to cover them without power steering in the desert. We stopped, the floor was soaked in oil, it was leaking under the hood.

We took everything apart and checked it. It's a leaking high pressure tube fitting where it fits into the steering rack. There wasn't much we could do. »

Navigated by the Belgian Fabian Lurquin, Sébastien Loeb is not leaving the Rallye du Maroc. The Alsatian will finish the event on Thursday, so as not to give up too much ground to their rivals for the W2RC world title, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel (Toyota, 3rd overall), but he will suffer a fixed penalty of several hours.

The BRX Hunter T1+ was not at the party this Wednesday. © Julien Delfosse / DPPI

« There is one day of racing left, so we might as well continue. We will try to score some points in the special stage tomorrow (Thursday). That's all we can aim for. We don't know what the future may hold for rally raids. It's certain that things are going badly in the championship, but we are not safe from the fact that Nasser (Al-Attiyah) encounters a problem. » All that will remain is the Andalusia Rally (Spain, October 18-23) to catch up with the Qatari, who should take several dozen points ahead at the end of the Morocco Rally.

Bad series

Sébastien Loeb also had difficulty hiding his frustration. A few days earlier, a broken suspension shaft had cost him about twenty minutes. “We had two problems (on this rally), which are not very well known. We have been driving with the same power steering for two years; I had a DA problem during the Baja Aragon (in 2021, while leading the race, he was overtaken by Nasser Al-Attiyah and finished 7th. Editor’s note). Since then, things have gone pretty well. I have no explanation.

It's always frustrating to stop because of a mechanical problem. I did the same thing recently in Greece, so I think I gave! »

The 48-year-old pilot was finally gaining some perspective on his situation. Clearly, he has never won a single rally raid since his first start in the discipline, already in Morocco, in 2015 with Peugeot.

“It's better that this kind of trouble doesn't happen at all. Above all, we must try to understand what happened and ensure that it does not happen again. In a discipline like that, the major point is reliability. You pass 400 miles in the middle of the desert, the slightest problempine can happen and you are dead (sic). You must therefore drive a tank, which is unbreakable… This was not the case today. »

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