Citroen into the top not only 4 Nordics

But let’s go case by case. Going by wins, Sébastien Loeb moves into the top20 of the all time charts. This may sound not so amazing, but once you have a closer look, you understand that it is some kind of an exclusive club. After all we are talking over 30 years of WRC history with so far 15 different World Champion drivers, many of them having scored multiple titles. The Rally Sweden victory was Loeb’s career 6th victory and that moves him into the top20 of a list that amazingly includes only 3 other current works drivers! Here the list in detail:
1st, Carlos Sainz – 25 wins (1152 career points)
2nd, Colin Mc Rae – 25 wins (625pts)
3rd, Tommi Mäkinen – 24 wins
4th, Juha Kankkunen – 23 wins
5th, Didier Auriol – 20 wins
6th, Markku Alen – 19 wins
7th, Hannu Mikkola – 18 wins
8th, Massimo Biasion – 17 wins
9th, Björn Waldegaard – 16 wins
10th, Marcus Grönholm – 15 wins
11th, Walter Röhrl – 14 wins
12th, Stig Blomqvist – 11 wins (575pts)
13th, Timo Salonen – 11 wins (508pts)
14th, Ari Vatanen – 10 wins (518pts)
15th, Richard Burns – 10 wins (351pts)
16th, Gilles Panizzi – 7 wins
17th, Bernard Darniche – 7 wins
18th, Sandro Munari – 7 wins
19th, Kenneth Eriksson – 6 wins (489pts)
20th, Sébastien Loeb – 6 wins (115pts)

However at least reigning World Champ Petter Solberg may join the club soon. He is currently listed in these charts as 22nd with 5 wins while Markko Märtin is 36th with 2 wins. Interestingly Francois Duval moved into the top100 after Monte Carlo, into 98th place to be exact, while Toni Gardemeister is just outside the top100 and Mikko Hirvonen still has some way to go. However at 100th place there are no wins, purely going by career points, starts and finishes and that area may well change once we give it a polish after our database is completed. It is a dodgy area anyway, since the points system keeps changing all the time. One record within the "lower ranks" is that Jari-Matti Latvala lost his 100% WRC finishing record when the engine of his group N Subaru expired in Sweden SS2.

In the car models there were interesting proceedings lately. The Lancia Delta, that was basically alone in the early group A days, will therefore probably stay unbeaten forever. But amazingly the Peugeot 206 managed to move past Ford Escort Mk2 and the long wheel base Audi Quattro last year. The 206 has 24 victories compared to i.e. 21 for the Quattro. Going through that file, other car models that made history are the Lancia Stratos, 8th with 17 WRC event wins and the Peugeot 205 T16 9th with 16 WRC wins, which it scored in only a little more than 2 seasons.

In all this the Citroen Xsara (in its WRCar version) now just scored its victories number 7 and 8, which makes the Xsara joined 14th with the Ford Escort Cosworth. The only current works car model that has more victories is the Ford Focus with 13 wins in 11th place.

The chart of the car manufacturers seems more important (and more straight forward) than the car models and here we saw excitement throughout the 2003 season. Namely Peugeot, Ford and Toyota seemed to be tied in a battle for the history books. Yet again Lancia is unbeatable for a long time to come, the Italian brand having scored a total of 73 victories, more than half of them with the group A Delta, the Stratos adding 17, the Rally 037 6 wins and surprisingly it may seem the group B Delta S4 only 4 wins. The excitement was around 2nd place in the manufacturers lately. Toyota was 2nd for some time, thanks to altogether 43 victories with different shapes, models, generations and categories of Celica and Corolla models. But Peugeot and Ford caught up big style. And once they had passed Toyota, they kept chasing each other. Peugeot first moved ahead, but soon Ford passed Peugeot with Peugeot’s victory in Catalunya 2003 now sealing a tie. We have however not counted the victories of the 1981 WRC winning Talbot Sunbeam Lotus to Peugeot’s score, even though this car was effectively run by the same people under the “Peugeot Talbot Sport” banner. Ford adds scores mainly from the Escort, but once again it is different generations, shapes, etc., the Escort contributed to Ford’s success story as Mk1, Mk2 and the later Cosworth and WRC models, a story that stretches to 30 years of rallying.

Now we have Citroen joining the top10 of that list. Their charts seem to be misleading as far as their history goes. Citroen now has 10 WRC victories, 2 with the Xsara F2 Kit Car and 8 with the Xsara T4 WRCar, which may indicate Citroen is a young company in rallying terms. But far from it, the ID, DS & SM models were massively successful rally cars in the 1960s and 1970s. However, as was actually the case with Ford and Peugeot as well, the marathon/long distance rallies were king with Citroen’s marketing department when the WRC was born. The truth is actually that Citroen was annoyed with the government of the sport, following a controversial disqualification of the Minis in Monte Carlo 1966. While Citroen and Pauli Toivonen were awarded the victory, it was a victory that damaged Citroen’s name in public more than anything else and it indeed were proceedings Citroen did not agree with at all. As a result this Rallye Monte Carlo 1966 was the last European sprint event they were seen on for a very, very long time. Before that Citroen ID driver Paul Contelloni won the Monte Carlo and the ERC 1959 and in 1960 René Trautmann again in a Citroen ID threw away a near certain ERC title when crashing out of that year’s RAC Rally. The DS model won the Tour de Corse 1961 & 1963 and the Rally Finland 1962. After the Monte 1966 disaster Citroen DS, SM & CX models celebrated many successes in marathons, such as Morocco, Bandama, Liége-Sophia-Liége and they still did so when the WRC was born. They also dominated the famous original London-Sydney Rally until Lucien Bianchi crashed out with the finish line in sight. When Citroen returned to the WRC, it was already in the 1980s and first with amateur & privateer projects, such as the AX and the group B Visa, while some minor GS successes before were entirely private. The group B BX was a disaster and Citroen then spent some time in raid events with a car that was basically a re-bodied Peugeot 205 T16. The first big WRC victory for this traditional brand such came as late as Catalunya 1999 and with a Formula 2 car at that. But with their first victory only being less than 5 years ago, they have by now passed traditional brands as i.e. Nissan/Datsun (counted together), Mazda and Opel.

Here the charts for the most successful WRC makes:
1st, Lancia – 73 wins
=2nd, Peugeot – 45
=2nd, Ford – 45
4th, Toyota – 43
5th, Subaru – 39
6th, Mitsubishi – 34
7th, Audi – 24
8th, Fiat – 21
9th, Renault (including the Alpine) – 12
10th, Citroen – 10