Less than ten weeks after the end of the 2012 season, the FIA World Rally Championship is back. And, like last year, the 2013 season gets underway with the most famous event of the lot: the Rallye Monte-Carlo.
The Monte is the oldest rally in the WRC calendar and the longest running competition in all rally sport. This year will be the 81st edition of the event, which can trace its roots back to 1911 when the first of the marathon pan-European rallies that finished in the Principality of Monaco was held.
This rally will be one of only four events in which defending, and nine-time World Rally Champion, Sebastien Loeb will be appearing in 2013. And going on past performance, with six victories from his last seven starts, it seems very likely the Citroen DS3 WRC driver will win again.
But with 13 World Rally Cars entered in the event, there will be many drivers out to stop him. Not least his own Citroën Total Abu
Dhabi team-mates; 2010 Monte winner Mikko Hirvonen, Loeb’s former Citroen number two Dani Sordo and the 2011 Monte winner Brian Bouffier.
The main focus however will be on Volkswagen which, after a rigorous programme of testing and WRC acclimatisation, will make its eagerly anticipated entry into the WRC with drivers Sebastien Ogier and Jari Matti Latvala.
The FIA’s new WRC 2 category, the replacement for the SWRC (Super 2000 World Rally Championship), kicks off with eight entrants. Top seeded driver is Esapekka Lappi, in a Skoda Fabia S2000, with Sepp Wiegand next in a similar car. Armin Kremer (Subaru Impreza) and Luca Betti (Peugeot 207 S2000) are also ones to watch.