This story ran in Issue 04 of Handbrakes & Hairpins’ e-magazine.
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Gronholm Just-Just Clinches Victory In New Zealand
The World Rallying Championship has just witnessed the most intense and exciting event in recent times. Not only has this year’s WRC Rally of New Zealand gone down in the history books, but many more fans have been drawn to spectacular sport that is rallying.
For background information to this article, I searched a few websites. Many fans the world over now proclaim WRC as THE most thrilling motorsport series in the world. And with a winning margin of only 0.3 seconds over second-place finishers, it is not difficult to understand why.
Marcus Gronholm and Timo Rautiainen (BP-Ford World Rally Team) took the coveted winner’s trophy home, followed by Sebastien Loeb and Daniel Elena (Total Citroen World Rally Team) with the BP-Ford Focus of team-mate Mikko Hirvonen in third place.
The Flying Finn managed to pull out the most slender of gaps on the very last stage of the rally to pull off the win. The difference in time at the end of the event was a record-breaking three tenths of a second. This is after a total of 350km of Special Stages! I worked out that 0.3 seconds equates to half a car length in terms of distance! It was an awesome performance by both Gronholm and Loeb! Hats off to the boys!
Gronholm’s superlative victory now extends his lead in the Driver’s Championship by two points to ten ahead of Loeb. Ford has a comfortable lead over Citroen with 46 points separating them.
“It was an incredible fight all weekend and this win is fantastic for my championship hopes,” exclaimed Gronholm. “It’s the closest and best battle in my career and I’m delighted to have won it. There wasn’t room for a single missed gearchange. I’m really happy for the team, more so because everyone was able to stand outside and watch the final stage near the service park and share in our excitement when we knew we had done it. I stayed calm in the rally car and that’s something I’ve learned from many years’ practice of attacking. The only big stress came with choosing tyres because the conditions were inconsistent and when it’s as close as it has been here, then one wrong tyre choice would have ruined everything. It’s good to extend my championship lead and I think it’s going to be a great end to the season.”
Gronholm, a former WRC Champion, and Loeb exchanged places throughout the rally, with each driver hoping the other would make a mistake. The rally proper got underway on Day Two, and the conditions seemed tricky. Rain fell early in the morning, leaving the roads wet and slippery. Tyre choice was critical, and Loeb’s Citroen C4 took the early advantage with a two second gap over Gronholm after the day’s stiff competition.
Day Three provided more of the same weather conditions as Day Two as intermittent rain played havoc for rally engineers. In the meantime, Gronholm had managed to close the gap between himself and the Frenchman to 0.7 seconds going into the final stage. Surface conditions apparently deteriorated throughout the final stages, and this made Loeb drive more conservatively. Loeb decided to settle for second place, instead of crashing out on the final stage. “I didn’t get off to the best of starts,” admitted Loeb. “There was absolutely no grip on the first stage (SS12) and I didn’t manage to find the ideal pace. Marcus passed ahead by a tenth of a second but the rest of the morning went better for us. My Citroen C4 WRC was very competitive and enabled me to push harder on SS13 and SS14 which I won to regain the lead. The gap was less than three seconds, however, and the final loop promised to be extremely close. We managed to stay level with Marcus in many places, but we dropped time on each test. On top of that, rain started to fall just as we were about to start two of the stages. That’s rallying. I pushed as hard as I could but it was always at the back of my mind that eight points for finishing second would be better than a blank scorecard in terms of the fight for the Drivers’ title.”
This was all Gronholm needed to seal the victory. He pushed his BP-Ford Focus hard in the final stage, and it rewarded him with a win. Gronholm’s team-mate, Mikko Hirvonen, had a rough start to the rally, and quickly fell behind the pace set by the duelling champions ahead of him. The young rally ace kept working hard over the course of the weekend to make sure he went home with third place overall, and to bring home valuable Constructors’ points for Ford. Hirvonen now sits only eleven points behind Loeb in points. By the end of the rally he was all alone, sitting with a 50-second cushion between himself and Loeb, as well as over Chris Atkinson (Subaru World Rally Team) in fourth position.
“I made one wrong tyre choice on Friday and I was out of the battle,” said Hirvonen. “I’m not upset with third and I’ve enjoyed the weekend but I was a little unhappy with my driving and not being able to join Seb and Marcus in the fight for victory. But I feel like I’ve learned how to drive here and it was important for the team to get the points for third.”
Atkinson beat off a hard-charging Jari-Matti Latvala (Stobart Ford World Rally Team) to take fourth. Atkinson, who showed maturity in his driving in this rally, consistently finished in the top five in all stages. “That was a great fight for fourth, and I’m very happy that we came out on top,” commented Atkinson. “It’s great for the guys in the team too, and it shows we’re getting closer all the time. It would have been nice to be on the podium, and hopefully that’s no far away. I think we’ve had enough fourths now – we want some thirds, seconds and firsts! Overall it’s been a pretty good rally. We’ve battled hard all weekend, tried to fight when we could and be cautious when things haven’t worked so well. We did our best, and that’s all I can do. It’s back to asphalt next, and I’m certainly looking forward to that.”
Overall Results
01: M. Gronholm. T. Rautiainen (Ford Focus RS WRC ’07) – 3h 52m 53.9s
02: S. Loeb/D. Elena (Citroen C4 WRC) + 0.3s
03: M. Hirvonen/J. Lehtinen (Ford Focus RS WRC ’07) + 1m 42.8s
04: C. Atkinson/S. Prevot (Subaru Impreza S12B WRC ’07) + 2m 32.3s
05: J-M. Latvala/M. Anttila (Ford Focus RS WRC ’06) + 02m 36.9s
06: D. Sordo/M. Marti (Citroen C4 WRC) + 3m 42.0s
07: P. Solberg/P. Mills (Subaru Impreza S12B WRC ’07) + 03m 54.7s
08: U. Aava/K. Sikk (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo WRC 05) + 9m 16.3s
09: H. Solberg/C. Menkerud (Ford Focus RS WRC ’06) + 9m 54.6s
10: M. Wilson/M. Orr (Ford Focus RS WRC ’06) + 10m 19.9s