First Rally Without Loeb or Ogier Since 2006, Rally Sweden, Is Up for Grabs

The current WRC season has started amazingly, after a great rally at Monte Carlo, where none other than Sebastien Loeb became the oldest driver to win a world championship rally. He claimed his 80th overall win, following a close battle with compatriot Sebastien Ogier.

All you need to know about these guys is that they won a total of 17 World Championships together, with Loeb winning nine and Ogier eight. To understand even better what that means, since 2003 these two won the championship every single year, with the exception of 2019.

After almost two decades of continuous domination, the pair is still on top and winning almost everything. At this rate, WRC (World Rally Championship) should change the name to WRCS (World Rally Championship of Sebastien’s).

Ogier and Loeb are basically semi-retired now, so they will not take part in every rally. Therefore, this weekend's race will take place without the two legends on the starting grid, so new guys could come to the top place. It’s a big deal because Loeb was the first non-Nordic driver to win this rally back in 2004. Guess who was the second non-Nordic driver to win it? Yep, Ogier.

Rally Sweden always delivers. The brave men behind the wheel drive at enormous speeds through the trees, through roads full of snow. If that is not enough, sometimes a deer can come their way to check how good the car is. It’s safe to say that drivers have some loose screws up there.

At the same time, this winter rally is special because we have a lot of premieres. The obvious one is represented by the new hybrid-powered cars designed to attract new manufacturers to the rally world, and to lead WRC into a more sustainable future.

The 1.6-liter turbocharged internal combustion engine comes together with a mandatory 100kW hybrid unit. A combination of 500 bhp and a lot of snow sounds like super fun. And dangerous. At the same time, the “Big 3” of M-Sport, Ford, Hyundai and Toyota, built their cars around a safer chassis. Before, the chassis was based on production road cars.

A brief history of Rally Sweden

The first-ever Rally Sweden took place in 1950, and in 1973 it was officially introduced to the World Rally Championship. It is known as one of the hardest rally courses, and most of the time the only rally on snow.

Stig Blomqvist is the undisputed king of this course. He owns the record for most wins with seven, most race starts with 35, and most podiums with 16. At the same time, a Swedish manufacturer holds the record for wins here and that is Saab with ten wins. It took 31 years to get the first non-Swedish winner of this rally: Hannu Mikkola in an Audi was the one who broke the streak of Swedish winners.

A year after Collin McRae death, the Collin’s Crest Award has been created for the longest jump over a crest on the Vargasen stage. In 2019, Kris Meeke won it by jumping 41 meters (135 feet). The only non-Nordic guys who won in Sweden were Thierry Neuville and Ott Tanak.

Sweden is one of the most legendary places for rallying, a place where abilities to control the car are tested to the maximum. It's the place where boys become men, or the place that will mentally scar drivers for life.