[The 2012 World Rally Championship is underway, with the historic Monte Carlo rally that took place this weekend.  Teams had to face the treacherous roads that the Monte Carlo rally is known for, and more than a few fell victim during the 5 day event.  Eight time champion Sébastian Loeb one the event for the sixth time and drove like last season never ended.  Many in the Ford camp were hoping that Jari Matti Latvala would stop the robot-like Seb from a sixth victory, but a mistake in Jari’s pace notes caused the Finish driver to go off on day one.

Ford’s Petter Solberg did have a good rally however, and ended up finishing with a very respectable 3rd place podium.   Petter will be one to watch out for in the coming events as he has came to grips with the Fiesta very quickly.

Mini wrc 2012 Dani Sordo

MINI’s Dani Sordo showed great pace throughout the entire rally, despite a small setback on stage two.  The MINI driver ended up finishing in second place.  It will be interesting to see how the rest of MINI WRC team’s season pans out as BMW has cut back funding to concentrate on it’s return to DTM.  The Prodrive team is not one to back down to a challenge though, so don’t count out MINI for the championship fight.

Volkswagen showed up with a couple Skoda Fabia S2000’s the team is running to get ready for a full-on attack of the WRC in 2013.  Volkswagen’s lead driver Sebastien Ogier was having a fantastic rally up running in sixth place overall when he had an off.  Sebastien called it the 100mph crash the  “worst crash of his career”.  Volkswagen is determined to have success in the WRC,  and running in sixth until the crash, shows the determination within the Volkswagen camp.

Will Sébastian Loeb make it to an astounding 9 WRC championships this year?  Only time, dirt, sweat, snow, and loud backfires will tell the answer.  Check on the WRC Monte Carlo 2012 highlight clips below! – Colin Brandt

Rallye Monte Carlo 2012 – WRC


The highlights from the 2012 Rallye Monte-Carlo which was won by Sébastien Loeb (Citroën/Michelin).  http:/www.best-of-rallylive.com