Sébastien Loeb is an unlikely champion elect. Going into this weekend’s Wales Rally GB, Britain’s round of the World Rally championship, he was 30 points ahead of his arch rival Petter Solberg. By tonight he could be the first French world rally champion for a decade.
But until nine years ago the hottest sensation in the sport since Colin McRae had never even driven a rally car; he was too busy practising gymnastics. As a teenage champion gymnast in France, all the signs pointed towards him having a promising international career and he was tipped to go all the way — possibly to the Olympics.
“It is easy to say that I would have gone to the top,” says Loeb, 30. “But the training would have been hard. I was training for 17 hours a week; Olympic training would have taken 30 hours a week.”
Nevertheless, he believes his training has helped him in his current career. “The fact that I did gymnastics means that I am in good physical shape; my fitness gives me a good base to build from,” he says. “Mentally speaking, competing in the French championships in front of five or six judges introduced me to coping with pressure, which is not easy. Having experienced that during my days as a gymnast has allowed me to cope with the sheer stress of rallying.”
The two disciplines are not as far apart as would at first appear to be the case. “Reactions, precision and being supple are the three things rallying and gymnastics have in common,” insists Loeb. In fact, the way he sees it, it would not be going too far to suggest that rallying is the automotive equivalent of gymnastics. The jumps are the pommel horse, the handbrake turns are the floor exercises, and keeping a grip on the road is as testing as gripping the high bar.
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The transformation from gymnast to rally driver began when Loeb, an electrician’s apprentice during his teenage years, turned 18 and started competing in informal races with his mates near his home in Oberhoffen, Alsace. “I was always interested in speed, and always wanted to be the fastest,” says Loeb. “First it was mopeds, then cars, and also motorbikes in the forest. When I first had cars I was in the field for half the night trying to practise one corner as fast as I could. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it was.”
Loeb’s first car was a Renault 5 GT Turbo, bought when he was 18 for £1,500. It was “not very expensive, but it was fast”. Despite all the nocturnal off-road practice, it didn’t last long. “After six months I had a crash, so after that I bought another one — a Renault Super 5 GT Turbo. I changed the engine from one to the other because the new one was broken.” Loeb had six months to do that as he had also had his licence revoked “ for going too fast”.
By this time Loeb’s nascent passion for speed and cars was clear to his gymnastics teachers. In the space of two years the cars he owned read like a boy-racer wish list: Ford Fiesta Turbo, Peugeot 205 Rallye and two 205 GTis: “The 1.6 version,” he explains, “which had a better engine and gearbox than the bigger 1.9.”
The arrival of the 205 GTis coincided with the realisation among his friends that he was either going to kill himself racing on the road or needed to have a crack at rallying. They helped him break into rallying, a move that almost immediately cured Loeb of his wildness.
He won the class in his first rally, claimed the Citroën Saxo championship in 1998, and in 2001 almost won his debut event in a factory-entered Citroën Xsara on the world-class San Remo rally. “At each level I saw that I was the fastest. And all the time it felt natural,” says Loeb. “I did not really have to try.”
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He has now won nine world championship events in 24 months and is on a reported £3m-a-year salary with Citroën (he has never driven for another works team) while living tax-free near Basel, Switzerland.
“It is not only for the tax,” he defends. “Between the rallies I want to be somewhere really cool. Somewhere not in the town, but out in a village. Near where I can go mountain-biking, skiing or hill-climbing. I can go to the restaurants in Basel — in fact, everywhere I want — without having to sign autographs all the time.”
There is another reason to avoid France: its strict new policing of speed limits. He rarely crashes these days, but Loeb still likes to drive fast, even though his road cars are a selection of relatively tame Citroëns such as the C2 VTR and C8.
“It is true, there were too many crashes on the French roads. But for me the policing is not so good. It is too strict,” he says, citing overzealous enforcement. “If you don’t see the limit and in one place it is 50kph, but you are going faster, you can lose your licence. So I don’t like driving on the roads (in France) as it is too dangerous for my job.”
On the verge of clinching the World Rally championship, Loeb has few regrets about his change of sport. Not that he doesn’t sometimes wonder what could have been. “Of course I would like to know if I could have made it to the top of gymnastics,” he says, “but now I want to make sure I can make it to the top in rallying. In life there is no point in looking back.”
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Coverage of the Wales Rally GB starts on ITV1 at 2pm on Sunday September 19