Catalunya : Citroen Sport - PreviewAfter a brief but thrilling escapade on gravel in New Zealand, the 2007 World Rally Championship returns to asphalt for the twelfth round of the season in Spain where Citroën Sport has entered C4 WRCs for
Sebastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and
Dani Sordo/Marc Martí.
Despite taking place seven months later in the year, the format of the 2007 event is strikingly similar to that of 2006. The host town is once more the Costa Daurada resort of Salou and the service park again sets up camp in the Port Aventura theme park. Meanwhile, the majority of the stages are identical to those that featured last year and will take crews high into the sierra near Réus where they promise to attract the usual large, enthusiastic crowds.
Citroën's drivers view the Rally Catalunya as the 2007 season's first true sealed surface fixture and are looking forward to the challenge. "Okay, the weather was pretty mild for the Monte Carlo Rally but it was still a highly specific event and was made particularly complex by the wintry road conditions,"
Sebastien Loeb said. "Germany?" queries Dani Sordo. "You sometimes have to look hard for the asphalt! Spain is the year's first real sealed surface event."
That doesn't make the Spanish round any easier, however, as Citroën Sport's Technical Manager Xavier Mestelan-Pinon observes: "The Rally Catalunya is a genuine asphalt event, but it has its own special features, such as its smooth tarmac and the hard cornering dictated by the stages.
The apexes also tend to cut up and a significant amount of dirt is dragged onto the road for the second pass by the repeated cutting of corners. Hopefully, the combination of Citroën Sport's experience and the skill of our crews will enable us to find the ideal set-up and technical solutions for this special challenge."
"We will need to hit the ground running," says Loeb. "The pace is usually very fast and it can be difficult to pull out a real gap, so it will be important to be able to push from the word go. The Citroën C4 WRC was very competitive on the Monte in January, and again in August in Germany. Hopefully, that trend will continue over the Rally Catalunya's smooth stages."
The Rally Catalunya clearly has a special taste for Spaniard Dani Sordo. "Competing on home ground, in front of home fans, family and friends is always nice," he smiles. "That said, it can mean extra pressure, too, because you don't want to disappoint. I am fully conscious of the stakes regarding Citroën and Sébastien. I will do everything I can to help Seb and that means doing as well as I can against his main rival."
"We have won our last two visits to Spain and the new C4 WRC has already given us two wins on asphalt," explains Guy Fréquelin. "That probably makes us favourites, yet that would be forgetting such crucial parameters as the preponderant role weather can play and the progress our rivals have made. We consequently go to Catalonia with a great deal of caution and humility. There are a number of factors in Citroën Sport's favour, such as the promise shown by the C4 both in testing and on previous rounds and also the speed of our two crews on asphalt. We are fully aware of all that and we are fired up and ready for battle to begin. At the same time, however, we know it won't be easy and that the fight promises to be as fierce as ever..."
Source Citroen Sport
