Sebastien Loeb, nine-time WRC Champion, has been confirmed as the new member of the Peugeot-Hansen Team. He will race the entire 2016 season of the FIA World Rallycross Championship.
The Frenchman will be Timmy Hansen’s teammate this year and will drive a 550 HP Peugeot 208 WRX. This is Loeb’s second entry in an international competition behind the wheel of a Peugeot this year, as January found him driving a Peugeot 2008 DKR in South America.
Loeb has stated that he is very excited to race in a full Rallycross Championship season. The French driver, who still holds the best time at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb despite only running once, in 2013, expects the competitiveness of this championship to give him a new challenge.
We expect Loeb to perform well in the FIA RX Championship, as the 42-year-old Red Bull driver has proven to be skilled behind the wheel of any race car and in any championship he entered.
Sebastien Loeb enrolled his first rally in 1995, when he drove a Citroen. Years later, in 2002, he signed with the Citroen factory team.
We must mention that Loeb won the Rallycross final in 2012 at the X Games XVIII. So he knows a thing or two about rallycross, a natural event since he was involved in the development of Citroen’s DS3 RX model.
The race driver will once again be a rookie in a new championship, but he will encounter familiar faces at the starting grid. After all, WRC Champion Petter Solberg is the reigning FIA World Rallycross Champion, so the two former WRC drivers will race each other in an exciting duel this season. Rumors place the two WRC drivers in the roster of Toyota's 2017 WRC team, but they have yet to confirm this possibility.
Loeb’s new team was formed through a venture between Peugeot Sport, Hansen Motorsport and Peugeot-Hansen Academy. The team has already performed tests on an ice track on a frozen lake in Are, Sweden. The first FIA World RX Championship round of 2016 will take place in Montalegre, Portugal, from April 15-17.
Rallycross on Ice | Sebastien Loeb Takes On a New Racing Challenge
Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland. Full profile
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