RallyRACC 2012: Full WRC entry

(27/10/2012)

Dani Sordo (Mini). RallyRACC 2011

There cannot be a better entry of World Rally Cars to put and end to the 2012 World Rally Championship, from 9 to 11 November, with the 48 RallyRACC: a total of 17 vehicles entered by Ford (8), Mini (5) and Citroën (4), with the recently crowned world champions, Sébastien Loeb, Daniel Elena and Citroën Total on top of the list and the presence of the eleven leading drivers of the championship.

The top level fight at the RallyRACC will be focussed on the honour of clinching the last victory or the last podium positions in a season that will mark a turning point in the world championship, due to the driver changes and the new categories to be appearing in 2013. The Citroën DS3 units will obviously be starting as favourites, but the Ford Fiesta RS have shown their competitiveness on this ground, as well as the Mini John Cooper Works, with one of them, Dani Sordo, trying to close the year as he started: on the podium.

Although the WRC driver, co-driver and manufacturer titles have already been awarded before arriving in Spain, the teams are not willing to miss the RallyRACC, and all registered teams will be attending: Citroën Total, with Sébastien Loeb and Mikko Hirvonen (Citroën DS3); Ford in their last attendance as a works team with Jari-Matti Latvala and Petter Solberg (Ford Fiesta RS); M-Sport Ford, with Ott Tänak and the Caribbean driver John Powell (Ford Fiesta RS); Qatar, with Hans Weijs (Citroën DS3); Citroën Junior, with Thierry Neuville (Citroën DS3); Brazil, with Daniel Oliveira (Ford Fiesta RS); and Adapta, con Mads Østberg (Ford Fiesta RS). They will be joined by Mini Portugal (Chris Atkinson, Paulo Nobre/Mini John Cooper Works), Prodrive (Dani Sordo, Jarkko Nikara/Mini John Cooper Works), Czech Ford (Martin Prokop/Ford Fiesta RS), Seashore Qatar (Abdulaziz Alkuwari/Mini John Cooper Works) and Evgeny Novikov (Ford Fiesta RS).

The rally victories of this year were clinched so far by Loeb (8), Latvala (2), Mads Østberg (1) and Mikko Hirvonen (1). These are the WRC overall standings ahead of the Spanish round:

1-Sébastien Loeb (France/Citroën), 244 points
2-Mikko Hirvonen (Finland/Citroën), 198 points
3-Mads Østberg (Norway/Ford), 137 points
4-Jari-Matti Latvala (Finland/Ford), 133 points
5-Petter Solberg (Norway/Ford), 124 points
6-Evgeny Novikov (Russia/Ford), 87 points
7-Thierry Neuville (Belgium/Citroën), 53 points
8-Ott Tänak (Estonia/Ford), 52 points
9-Martin Prokop (Czech Rep./Ford), 46 points
10-Sébastien Ogier (France/Volkswagen), 41 points