Loeb Pikes Peak
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A super article about Loeb written by Anthony Peacock. Surprised he started out as a electrician....
For somebody who has written so much enduring history in the World Rally Championship, thanks to 87 wins and nine consecutive world titles, Sebastien Loeb is surprising unsentimental about heritage.
To put those numbers in perspective, the next most successful WRC driver in terms of victories is Marcus Gronholm, with 30 wins, and in terms of championships, Tommi Makinen with four consecutive titles.
But Loeb makes an exception for Pikes Peak – because that's one occasion when he's got carried away by the romance of it all.
“I remember watching the Climbdance film and that's when I first became aware of Pikes Peak,” says Loeb. “Of course it was really impressive: you looked at it and thought, ‘Wow, it would be cool to do that.' But it was a dream. When that film came out I was only young: I loved cars and motorbikes but I never dreamed that I would become a professional driver. It was more likely I would end up as a mechanic: I was always playing with cars.”
In fact, Loeb trained as an electrician. At the same time he started rallying for fun in a junior championship, and everybody knows what happened next. The Frenchman is now synonymous with Citroen; to the point where Citroen's general manager Frederic Banzet once famously said: “Citroen without Loeb is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower.”
But Loeb's first rally car was actually a Peugeot 106, which is what makes this latest outing in Pikes Peak a surprising return to his roots.
There was a lot of political maneuvering behind the scenes to get Loeb into the car after the program was first announced. Originally, it was going to be his fellow Frenchman Romain Dumas slated for the Pikes Peak drive, but with Dumas being a Porsche factory driver the situation became complicated.
With Red Bull on board (after the energy drink company's original idea to take a Formula 1 car up the hill was vetoed, due to the requirement for a rollcage) Loeb was approached to drive the 208, thanks to his personal links with Red Bull. And his extraterrestrial talent might have had something to do with it as well…
“I just stayed out of the whole discussion part,” said the 39-year-old. “I said that I wanted to do it and the project sounded really good, but I didn't get involved in any of the contracts or the talks with the bosses.”
Peugeot's people talked to Citroen's people and finally the decision was made: Loeb would drive at Pikes Peak. It was an announcement that would propel the event's global recognition to a whole new level and it couldn't have come at a better time: exactly 25 years after Ari Vatanen's iconic record-breaking conquest, with the equally legendary Peugeot 405 T16 – perhaps the archetypal Pikes Peak car.
In the weeks leading up to the program, the nostalgia dial was set to overdrive, with the 405 T16 dusted down to be photographed alongside the new 208 T16 Pikes Peak during the tests at Mont Ventoux in Provence, southern France.
Not that there was really much time to make too many elaborate plans as the whole project came together in just four months. According to Peugeot's project chief Jean-Christophe Pallier, there were echoes of the late 1980s even in that.
“If you think about it, the circumstances were pretty similar back then and now,” he points out. “One project had just come to an end – in that case, the rally campaign with the Group B car – and the team wanted a one-off event to focus on and use the know-how they had gained.”
This time, it's Peugeot's endurance racing program that was stopped last year, as a result of which the 208 T16 is largely a 908 Le Mans racer under the (all-carbon) skin. With Pikes Peak now being fully asphalted, this was a golden opportunity to make use of the parts and knowledge while recreating a bit of history.
The rear wing, for example, actually competed at Le Mans in 2007, as did the roof-mounted air scoop. The running gear and suspension is all 908, while the engine is a Peugeot 3.2-liter V6 twin turbo developed for the well-known Pescarolo team, which was used at Le Mans up until 2003. Peugeot briefly considered using the diesel V8 fitted to their 908 Le Mans car, but the length, weight and power output of the latest engine (built to strict Le Mans regulations) were ultimately judged not to be suitable.
“The car feels much more like a racing car than a rally car to drive,” adds Loeb, who had the next chapter of his career – Citroen's FIA World Touring Car Championship program – confirmed yesterday while he was practicing at Pikes Peak. “The downforce and of course the power: that's pure racing car. You certainly wouldn't find a power to weight ratio of one horsepower per kilogram in a rally car. Luckily, I think: the Group B cars were impressive to look at but you don't really need all of that power in a modern rally car; they are impressive enough as they are…”
There's no doubt that Peugeot starts as the firm favorite to shatter the benchmark of 9m46s established by Rhys Millen last year and take the company's first win in Colorado since 1989, when Robby Unser – who will be one of Peugeot's special guests on Sunday – triumphed with the 405 T16. Many people are talking of a time under nine minutes. But while Loeb's test runs have certainly been looking mighty impressive (“there's one class for Loeb and another for everyone else” is how multiple winner Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima puts it) the man himself is not taking anything for granted.
“Honestly, anything could happen,” Loeb says. “It's my first time here and we are up against people with a lot of experience. You just get one run up the hill and you can make a mistake or have some bad weather: there are many things that can go wrong and even more fast cars against us.”
There's current record-holder Rhys Millen in a brand-new car, of course, and the Norma prototype that was consistently second to Loeb in qualifying. Not to mention the 900-horsepower Mini Countryman of Loeb's experienced compatriot Jean-Philippe Dayraut.
“Jean-Philippe actually lent me his in-car videos from last year for me to watch and understand the route a bit better,” adds Loeb. “It was very helpful and also I could see from that just how quick he is! There are many people here who know the route really well. I've been looking at Rhys Millen's car as it was being prepared in a pit garage close to us at Pikes Peak raceway and there's no doubt that he will be fast, too, as well as Romain.”
Loeb of course enlisted the help of his loyal lieutenant, co-driver Daniel Elena (also a nine-time champion) to help him prepare. “I'm used to recognizing a road through pace notes, so I thought that the best way to help me prepare for this mentally was to treat it a bit like a rally stage,” explains Loeb. “Myself and Daniel did about 10 runs through the route with a road car when I first came to America, writing pace notes like we would on a rally recce. Only now it was very different, as I then read the pace notes back to Daniel as I remembered them, and he told me if I was right or not. So that's really how I learned the course. Now I know the road well, but at first my method of learning was like hearing pace notes in my head as I approached each corner. Only it was my voice calling them and not Daniel's!”
Nonetheless, Loeb says you can't compare anything within the Pikes Peak course to a rally, with the possible exception of the middle part, just before Glen Cove. “There, it's a little bit like the Catalunya Rally in Spain, which is the fastest asphalt round of the WRC,” he points out. “But really the road is much wider: another reason why to me this feels much more like a racing circuit, although the scenery is definitely rally. What surprised me was how varied the course is: you go from this really fast wooded part at the bottom to a totally remote landscape at the top where you see just mountain and sky. Then the last part is as bumpy as hell: it's been resurfaced in places recently, but that doesn't seem to have made it any better.”
Loeb would have enjoyed the challenge of competing at Pikes Peak on gravel as well, although he recognizes that it wouldn't really have been possible to do it with the 208 as it currently stands.
“I think gravel would have been a lot of fun, but it wouldn't really have been suitable for this car, which is so focused and aggressive,” he says. “I've driven a lot of cars in my career – including Formula 1 cars – and I don't ever remember a car that surprises you so much. Even with a Formula 1 car, after three laps you pretty much know how it is and there are no surprises anymore. This car just gets your attention all the time. Obviously you have to respect it, but the sensations are amazing.”
And that's why Loeb has taken Pikes Peak to his heart, although this is actually only the second time in his life that he's traveled to the United States. The first time was to take part in the Los Angeles X Games last year – which he won.
“Pikes Peak is a different style of racing; a different style of competition but that's what I am looking for now,” says Loeb, who made the decision last year to turn his back on the WRC after more than a decade of dominance. “I still love rallying and I always will but it was time to move on. I've got everything I wanted to out of the sport and it was time for new challenges. I figured if I wanted to do something different now was the time to do it: there was no point in waiting until I'm 50. I've had a lot of fun this year and now of course we have touring cars to look forward to next year, so I've got absolutely no regrets about my decision.”
Having said that, Loeb has been busier this year than he ever was during his rally career. When he goes back to his residence in Switzerland after Pikes Peak, he will be able to enjoy his first weekend at home in eight weeks. This year he's contesting a full FIA GT campaign with his own team, Sebastien Loeb Racing, and taking part in five rallies, as well as Pikes Peak and testing the new Citroen Touring Car. He also somehow found time to squeeze in two Porsche Supercup rounds in Spain and Monaco and a small rally in Switzerland with his wife Severine as co-driver.
Quickest by a comfortable margin in qualifying on Wednesday, Loeb now faces one of his biggest challenges yet in living up to expectations during Sunday's race.
“I don't feel any special pressure; I'll just try to do my best,” he says, cool to the last. “In the end, qualifying isn't of massive importance here. It all comes down to your performance on the day.”
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For somebody who has written so much enduring history in the World Rally Championship, thanks to 87 wins and nine consecutive world titles, Sebastien Loeb is surprising unsentimental about heritage.
To put those numbers in perspective, the next most successful WRC driver in terms of victories is Marcus Gronholm, with 30 wins, and in terms of championships, Tommi Makinen with four consecutive titles.
But Loeb makes an exception for Pikes Peak – because that's one occasion when he's got carried away by the romance of it all.
“I remember watching the Climbdance film and that's when I first became aware of Pikes Peak,” says Loeb. “Of course it was really impressive: you looked at it and thought, ‘Wow, it would be cool to do that.' But it was a dream. When that film came out I was only young: I loved cars and motorbikes but I never dreamed that I would become a professional driver. It was more likely I would end up as a mechanic: I was always playing with cars.”
In fact, Loeb trained as an electrician. At the same time he started rallying for fun in a junior championship, and everybody knows what happened next. The Frenchman is now synonymous with Citroen; to the point where Citroen's general manager Frederic Banzet once famously said: “Citroen without Loeb is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower.”
But Loeb's first rally car was actually a Peugeot 106, which is what makes this latest outing in Pikes Peak a surprising return to his roots.
There was a lot of political maneuvering behind the scenes to get Loeb into the car after the program was first announced. Originally, it was going to be his fellow Frenchman Romain Dumas slated for the Pikes Peak drive, but with Dumas being a Porsche factory driver the situation became complicated.
With Red Bull on board (after the energy drink company's original idea to take a Formula 1 car up the hill was vetoed, due to the requirement for a rollcage) Loeb was approached to drive the 208, thanks to his personal links with Red Bull. And his extraterrestrial talent might have had something to do with it as well…
“I just stayed out of the whole discussion part,” said the 39-year-old. “I said that I wanted to do it and the project sounded really good, but I didn't get involved in any of the contracts or the talks with the bosses.”
Peugeot's people talked to Citroen's people and finally the decision was made: Loeb would drive at Pikes Peak. It was an announcement that would propel the event's global recognition to a whole new level and it couldn't have come at a better time: exactly 25 years after Ari Vatanen's iconic record-breaking conquest, with the equally legendary Peugeot 405 T16 – perhaps the archetypal Pikes Peak car.
In the weeks leading up to the program, the nostalgia dial was set to overdrive, with the 405 T16 dusted down to be photographed alongside the new 208 T16 Pikes Peak during the tests at Mont Ventoux in Provence, southern France.
Not that there was really much time to make too many elaborate plans as the whole project came together in just four months. According to Peugeot's project chief Jean-Christophe Pallier, there were echoes of the late 1980s even in that.
“If you think about it, the circumstances were pretty similar back then and now,” he points out. “One project had just come to an end – in that case, the rally campaign with the Group B car – and the team wanted a one-off event to focus on and use the know-how they had gained.”
This time, it's Peugeot's endurance racing program that was stopped last year, as a result of which the 208 T16 is largely a 908 Le Mans racer under the (all-carbon) skin. With Pikes Peak now being fully asphalted, this was a golden opportunity to make use of the parts and knowledge while recreating a bit of history.
The rear wing, for example, actually competed at Le Mans in 2007, as did the roof-mounted air scoop. The running gear and suspension is all 908, while the engine is a Peugeot 3.2-liter V6 twin turbo developed for the well-known Pescarolo team, which was used at Le Mans up until 2003. Peugeot briefly considered using the diesel V8 fitted to their 908 Le Mans car, but the length, weight and power output of the latest engine (built to strict Le Mans regulations) were ultimately judged not to be suitable.
“The car feels much more like a racing car than a rally car to drive,” adds Loeb, who had the next chapter of his career – Citroen's FIA World Touring Car Championship program – confirmed yesterday while he was practicing at Pikes Peak. “The downforce and of course the power: that's pure racing car. You certainly wouldn't find a power to weight ratio of one horsepower per kilogram in a rally car. Luckily, I think: the Group B cars were impressive to look at but you don't really need all of that power in a modern rally car; they are impressive enough as they are…”
There's no doubt that Peugeot starts as the firm favorite to shatter the benchmark of 9m46s established by Rhys Millen last year and take the company's first win in Colorado since 1989, when Robby Unser – who will be one of Peugeot's special guests on Sunday – triumphed with the 405 T16. Many people are talking of a time under nine minutes. But while Loeb's test runs have certainly been looking mighty impressive (“there's one class for Loeb and another for everyone else” is how multiple winner Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima puts it) the man himself is not taking anything for granted.
“Honestly, anything could happen,” Loeb says. “It's my first time here and we are up against people with a lot of experience. You just get one run up the hill and you can make a mistake or have some bad weather: there are many things that can go wrong and even more fast cars against us.”
There's current record-holder Rhys Millen in a brand-new car, of course, and the Norma prototype that was consistently second to Loeb in qualifying. Not to mention the 900-horsepower Mini Countryman of Loeb's experienced compatriot Jean-Philippe Dayraut.
“Jean-Philippe actually lent me his in-car videos from last year for me to watch and understand the route a bit better,” adds Loeb. “It was very helpful and also I could see from that just how quick he is! There are many people here who know the route really well. I've been looking at Rhys Millen's car as it was being prepared in a pit garage close to us at Pikes Peak raceway and there's no doubt that he will be fast, too, as well as Romain.”
Loeb of course enlisted the help of his loyal lieutenant, co-driver Daniel Elena (also a nine-time champion) to help him prepare. “I'm used to recognizing a road through pace notes, so I thought that the best way to help me prepare for this mentally was to treat it a bit like a rally stage,” explains Loeb. “Myself and Daniel did about 10 runs through the route with a road car when I first came to America, writing pace notes like we would on a rally recce. Only now it was very different, as I then read the pace notes back to Daniel as I remembered them, and he told me if I was right or not. So that's really how I learned the course. Now I know the road well, but at first my method of learning was like hearing pace notes in my head as I approached each corner. Only it was my voice calling them and not Daniel's!”
Nonetheless, Loeb says you can't compare anything within the Pikes Peak course to a rally, with the possible exception of the middle part, just before Glen Cove. “There, it's a little bit like the Catalunya Rally in Spain, which is the fastest asphalt round of the WRC,” he points out. “But really the road is much wider: another reason why to me this feels much more like a racing circuit, although the scenery is definitely rally. What surprised me was how varied the course is: you go from this really fast wooded part at the bottom to a totally remote landscape at the top where you see just mountain and sky. Then the last part is as bumpy as hell: it's been resurfaced in places recently, but that doesn't seem to have made it any better.”
Loeb would have enjoyed the challenge of competing at Pikes Peak on gravel as well, although he recognizes that it wouldn't really have been possible to do it with the 208 as it currently stands.
“I think gravel would have been a lot of fun, but it wouldn't really have been suitable for this car, which is so focused and aggressive,” he says. “I've driven a lot of cars in my career – including Formula 1 cars – and I don't ever remember a car that surprises you so much. Even with a Formula 1 car, after three laps you pretty much know how it is and there are no surprises anymore. This car just gets your attention all the time. Obviously you have to respect it, but the sensations are amazing.”
And that's why Loeb has taken Pikes Peak to his heart, although this is actually only the second time in his life that he's traveled to the United States. The first time was to take part in the Los Angeles X Games last year – which he won.
“Pikes Peak is a different style of racing; a different style of competition but that's what I am looking for now,” says Loeb, who made the decision last year to turn his back on the WRC after more than a decade of dominance. “I still love rallying and I always will but it was time to move on. I've got everything I wanted to out of the sport and it was time for new challenges. I figured if I wanted to do something different now was the time to do it: there was no point in waiting until I'm 50. I've had a lot of fun this year and now of course we have touring cars to look forward to next year, so I've got absolutely no regrets about my decision.”
Having said that, Loeb has been busier this year than he ever was during his rally career. When he goes back to his residence in Switzerland after Pikes Peak, he will be able to enjoy his first weekend at home in eight weeks. This year he's contesting a full FIA GT campaign with his own team, Sebastien Loeb Racing, and taking part in five rallies, as well as Pikes Peak and testing the new Citroen Touring Car. He also somehow found time to squeeze in two Porsche Supercup rounds in Spain and Monaco and a small rally in Switzerland with his wife Severine as co-driver.
Quickest by a comfortable margin in qualifying on Wednesday, Loeb now faces one of his biggest challenges yet in living up to expectations during Sunday's race.
“I don't feel any special pressure; I'll just try to do my best,” he says, cool to the last. “In the end, qualifying isn't of massive importance here. It all comes down to your performance on the day.”
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Thread Starter
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 10,535
Likes: 60
From: Park Ridge N.J.
I suspect you've nailed it with this comment. Dumas was actually supposed to be the guy driving this car, but Pug ended up going with Loeb. I'd guess that if Dumas drove it the result would've been very similar. Honestly, as a privateer who struggles to get track time, the difference between the pros and everyone else is massive. Seat time is king...and truck loads of money doesn't hurt either. 
Dave
Dave
**** happens but reallly!
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/pik...esnt-632900221
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/pik...esnt-632900221
Last edited by jerdeitzel; Jul 3, 2013 at 07:45 AM.
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