Fresh from his sixth consecutive WRC drivers’ title, Sébastien Loeb has revealed that he is still hankering after some Formula 1 action next year.
It was widely reported in the closing weeks of the WRC season that Loeb was being lined up for an F1 drive in the inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the wheel of a Toro Rosso car – probably in place of Jaime Alguersuari – but whatever hopes the 35-year-old Frenchman might have had in that direction were quashed by the FIA’s refusal to grant him the Superlicence he would have needed to compete at track motorsport’s highest level.
But Loeb is reportedly now in talks with Red Bull Racing about further tests to add to the one from last year’s close season, though he acknowledges that they would purely be for fun and evaluative purposes, not as a true test for one of either Red Bull or Toro Rosso’s future seats.
'I would love to test again. It’s always a pleasure to drive an F1 car' – Sébastien Loeb
“I don’t think that an opportunity like this [the drive in Abu Dhabi] will present itself again – it’s gone,” said Loeb, who had also been linked at one stage with the incoming USGP team lining up on the 2010 F1 grid. “If I didn’t get a Superlicence now, why would I in the future?
“But I would love to test again. It’s always a pleasure to drive an F1 car.”
FIA rules prevent testing on current cars during the active race season, so any more track test drives would have to be in an RB5, not the new RB6 currently being developed by Adrian Newey’s team at RBR HQ in Milton Keynes.
Another option for Loeb might be one of Red Bull’s crowd-pleasing F1 show runs in cities around the globe, such as the drive around the astroturf of a Japanese baseball outfield enjoyed by David Coulthard recently.
Meanwhile, Loeb’s main priority is his 2010 challenge in the Citroën C4 WRC and the likelihood of greater competition from new teams in world rallying, and he accepts that this will always be what he does best, and that getting a good result in his maiden grand prix would have been beyond him.
“It would have been impossible,” he admitted. “I’m not saying that out of false modesty. I know what I lack on a race circuit… in Formula 1, it would have been a little bit more.”
Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost also reflected on what would have been a difficult jump for Loeb to make in Abu Dhabi, despite his rallying pedigree.
“He knows how to drive a car – you don’t become rally world champion six times if you don’t,” Tost commented, “but the last second is the most difficult [in F1], which is something Valentino Rossi [newly-crowned six-time MotoGP champion, who has tested for Ferrari] realised as well.”
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