“The English won the 100-year war with France but it is not over”
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Motor sport is not only dangerous, it is also ruthless. It is populated by competitive people with a burning desire to win – there is no room for sentiment. It is this ruthlessness that has earned Formula 1 the sobriquet of the Piranha Club, but other disciplines are no less hard-headed, perhaps none more so than rallying.
Remember Kris Meeke being sacked by Citroën in 2018? It wasn’t just the sacking but the manner of it that had us wincing. Meeke was being booted out, said Citroën, because of his “excessively high number of crashes”.
Last month, the axe fell equally mercilessly on one of the all-time great rally partnerships. It was announced that after 23 years together Sébastien Loeb, the nine-time world rally champion, was severing his partnership with co-driver Daniel Elena. The break-up appeared to be the result of a truly dreadful Dakar Rally for the pair in the Prodrive-built BRX1 car, which was marred with mechanical problems and navigational mistakes, which we discussed in detail in last month’s magazine.