Going back to Loeb's roots

Found it. This is the road. The one that made a nine-time world rally champion. This is Seb's road. We've all got one of these roads - that favourite stretch of asphalt where parents' cars were regularly taken out, usually under the cover of darkness, and driven harder and faster than they had been during the day. Sebastien Loeb's road is, as you would expect, a good one.

After watching the Frenchman win everything the World Rally Championship had to offer for a decade, we decided to drive down to his part of the world to try to find out a little bit more about where he came from and what made him great. And the road is a good place to start.

Especially in a Porsche Cayenne GTS. We thought about a Citroen, but the first car Loeb bought himself as a world champion was a Porsche (albeit a 911... but the trip was too far and we had too much kit for one of those) - hence the fearsomely quick, growling V8.

The start is south-east out of the back of Oberhoffen-sur-Moder running towards the main road to Strasbourg - you'll understand if we don't give out specifics... There are very few undulations in the road, but it's a great mixture of fast sweepers and tighter, square corners and junctions. As a stage, it wouldn't look out of place on the route for an event like Ypres.

Two or three times up and down it and we're hooked as well, and courtesy of the Porsche's performance we're probably travelling along here quicker than Loeb would have managed in his hot hatch of choice. The mind boggles at what he could do if he came back and took the wheel of the Cayenne. That would definitely need to be done in the dark.

That said, there's a reasonable margin for error in the road as well. While it's not dissimilar in surface and nature of corners to Belgium, it doesn't have the same number of drainage ditches, which Loeb would likely have been grateful for from time to time...

Loeb was present everywhere © LAT

Loeb's friend and collaborator on his autobiography My line of Conduct, Sebastien Keller, has given us the inside track on where to find this place. As soon as I mentioned the road close to Oberhoffen he grinned. He knew.

Driving that road and those that surround the town where Loeb grew up, it would come as no surprise that his first World Rally Championship win came just a stone's throw across the German border in Trier back in 2002.

There was a common misconception that Loeb was Haguenau born and raised. Certainly, the first bit's right. But his parents Guy and Ingrid felt their apartment was too small, so they built a house just up the road in Oberhoffen, where he lived until he was a world champion. His links to Haguenau remained, however. He still went to school there. His mother taught maths at the Institution Sainte Philomene and, out of convenience, that was where Loeb went.

Arriving at the school at the weekend, it's missing the bustle of the school run, which gives more time to reflect on a young Seb wandering through the gates, gym bag over his shoulder. It's your average school in France, nothing special. But you definitely feel there's a blue plaque missing from the walls outside.

In the town itself, there are plenty of reminders that the man who has won 78 rounds of the World Rally Championship is from these parts. And never more so than at the Brooklyn Bar, on the corner of Rue de Marechal Foch. The place is as French as the Gauloises smoke that, until not so long ago, would have lingered in every corner.

This place has been a big part of Loeb's life, as Citroen PR Marie-Pierre Rossi testifies.

"When Seb was young, the Brooklyn Bar was like a second house for him," she says. "When he was young and starting to rally, he and Dani [Elena] didn't have any money and the guy would pay them coffees and Cokes."

Today, owner Jean-Luc's not feeling quite so benevolent (probably because we rocked up in a noisy Porsche). I pay for my espresso and look at the Loeb pictures scattered around the place. He likes the fact that I'm a fan. And I like the fact that people like him still have the fever to focus their business around a local hero.

That Loeb remains a regular in the Brooklyn - him and his friends met there prior to his mother's funeral 12 months ago - highlights how he really hasn't changed.

Evans in the road where Loeb learned to drive © LAT

Keller is the same age as Loeb and comes from the same town. He knew him before he started out on what would ultimately become the WRC's most successful-ever car journey in 1995.

Keller writes for the region's biggest newspaper Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace and has followed Loeb around the globe since 2002. Curiously, he's not a fan of rallying. But, like Jean-Luc, he's a fan of a fellow Alsatian.

"Sebastien's just a normal guy," says Keller. "He has the same friends as before. He has maybe eight or 10 of them, but they are the same ones he has always had."

But Loeb wasn't always on the world championship trail. He was 21 when he entered the FFSA's Rallye Jeunes competition. Despite being the quickest, he didn't tick all the boxes for the jury.

Had it not been for Dominique Heintz bankrolling him for a second shot in 1996 - which he also failed to win - there would be no nine world titles. Having competed himself, Heintz had always sought to help a young driver. He picked the right one and today runs Sebastien Loeb Racing with the 39-year-old.

When they first met, Loeb was working as an electrician at Socalec, a small electrical engineering firm on the outskirts of Haguenau. While capturing a picture of the place, one of Loeb's former colleagues arrives.

"For Seb?" he smiles. I nod. "Good man. Our man. Alsace man."

In a moment, my new friend captured Loeb. The real Seb. Not a mention of the 168 WRC starts, 116 podiums, 1619 points or multi-multi-millions of pounds earned.

We'd come in search of the man from Alsace. And we'd found him.

For these people it matters little that Loeb has left the WRC bound for the WTCC. What's important is that Alsace man will never change.

I think we can be sure of that.