Sheikh Khalid Tips Abu Dhabi Citroen Team For First-Time Success

Abu Dhabi, UAE, 16 January, 2013: The UAE’s Sheikh Khalid Al Qassimi has tipped the new Abu Dhabi Citroën Total World Rally Team to find first-time success this season at the start of a three-year tie up between the UAE capital and the dominant force in the World Rally Championship for the last eight years.

As the first of 13 WRC rounds roared to life in Monte Carlo, Al Qassimi said he expects the combination of Finland’s Mikko Hirvonen, Spain’s Dani Sordo and nine-times drivers’ champion Sebastien Loeb to hold the key to the battle for the manufacturers’ title, won for the last eight years by Citroën Racing.

With Loeb effectively surrendering his drivers’ title this season by contesting just four WRC events, Al Qassimi also believes Hirvonen and Sordo in two other DS3 WRCs are both capable of succeeding him in what he sees as a wide open battle for the Frenchman’s crown. 

“The team is definitely very capable coming out on top in the WRC again,” said Al Qassimi, the Abu Dhabi Racing chairman who returns to WRC action in another of the DS3 WRCs in Sweden next month. 

“From what I have seen, Citroen are extremely professional in everything they do, in the way they prepare the cars, and in every other aspect of the way they plan their rally programme.

“Loeb pushed himself to the limit, he won more world titles than anyone else, and so he has to be the greatest rally driver ever and of course he will be missed.” 

“But Hirvonen has what it takes to step up into is place. He is another driver who can push himself to the limit, and he was very consistent last year.

“Sordo was the best option of the other drivers who were considered for the team and he is also consistent, so the team has two men who could fight for the drivers’ title.

“I think it is wide open this season because everyone knows there will be a new champion at the end of the year, and they will all be going for it.”

Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena, along with Hirvonen and Jarmo Lehtinen, set off in the Monte Carlo Rally this morning for the Citroën Total Abu Dhabi WRT as the event began from Valence.

Sordo and co-driver Carlos del Barrio started the event in another DS3 WRC for Abu Dhabi Citroën Total WRT, the second team created by the new Abu Dhabi Racing-Citroën Racing partnership.