Highlights
Series
Explore
Extended logic suggests Sebastien Loeb won the 2008 World Rally Championship in Finland 10 days ago. Try and convince me otherwise. See, you can't.
Look at this sensibly. The Frenchman is a single point behind Ford's Mikko Hirvonen going into this week's Rally Deutschland - and we all know how uber-quick Loeb is on sealed surfaces. The rest of this season contains not one, but three asphalt rallies. All of them Loeb benefits. In the last three years Loeb won every one of those three rallies. Get that. Unbeaten in Germany, Catalunya and Corsica since 2004. Actually, unbeaten in Germany since... never. The man from Alsace has won each and every one of Germany's six world rally championship qualifiers.
So, let's be sensible. Loeb can bank 30 points.
But what can Hirvonen get off the asphalt? Let's be generous and say a third and two seconds. That's actually pretty far-fetched. As much as Hirvonen likes these asphalt events (pretty unusual for a Finn), he's not really a match for Francois Duval, who's returning to Stobart Ford for the trio, and Loeb's number two Dani Sordo, who will be looking to challenge his master for a win on each of those three rallies. But let's give the current WRC leader the benefit. So, that takes Mikko's total to 89, while Loeb's three wins would leave him on 96.
