It was mission accomplished for Sebastien Loeb as he helped Abt Cupra to its first podium finishes of the Extreme E season at the recent Island X Prix II, but while his arrival has been a boost for the team that ended 2022 as the one to beat, he admits his future with the team is undecided.
The nine-time World Rally and reigning Extreme E champion was drafted into the team in place of Nasser Al-Attiyah after it endured a difficult start to the 2023 season. The turnaround was almost instant, with Loeb and teammate Klara Andersson emerging from the second Sardinia event as the highest-scoring team, despite falling short of an overall round win.
“It’s always good to achieve a podium,” Loeb said. “It’s the first of the year for me in Extreme E and the first for Cupra. It was the first goal that we wanted to achieve, to do better than we did in the past.”
The first of the team’s two podiums during the weekend came in dramatic fashion, with Andersson wrestling the car home with three working wheels, but Loeb says the championship’s attritional nature is just something drivers have to learn to live with.
“In Extreme E it’s not a surprise anymore — you have some cars crashing, breaking down, some contact, some mud and trouble of visibility; it’s really tough to be out there in the fight,” he noted. “A lot is linked to the start — if you are ahead and have good visibility and the others are fighting behind, you are clear of trouble — but it was not our case.”
Loeb pointed out that even when you face misfortune in the category, giving up is never an option because even worse could happen to a rival.
“She [Andersson] had the problem and she went on three wheels, then she had a spin; you think, ‘OK, everything is lost,’ then we see another [Carl Cox Motorsport] car is spinning, the other [Veloce Racing] is going this way because she sees nothing, and we have three wheels — we just need to do two kilometers to finish the race and to be second,” he said. “Then you speak with her on the radio, ‘Be calm, just do no mistakes until the end.’ It’s a strange way to finish on the podium, but in the end we are on the podium.
“We get used to [the chaos], we know that it’s part of the lottery in these races. You have to accept the rules — it’s not exactly what I was used to in the past, that you fight for the position and you have a clean road and you just push. It is how it is and it makes a good show. It’s fun in the car. I enjoy it.”
While the on-track chaos in Extreme E can’t always be helped, Loeb praised the Abt Cupra team, as well as the X44 Vida Carbon Racing squad that he drove for last year, for setting themselves up best to deal with whatever is thrown at them.
“I have to say, I had a good car with X44 because we won the championship, it meant that we were doing a good job together,” he said. “But yes, Cupra, I think, has some very good engineers that have a lot of experience of different disciplines. We have everything we need to be able to fight.”
“It’s never nice to see a car on fire and everything around burning,” Loeb said. “It was a bad experience for the whole championship — at the moment they haven’t restarted because they need to find a solution and to understand exactly what happened.”
He doesn’t expect the team to prepare two more Lancias to compete next year, but says no decision has been taken yet.
“I don’t think so,” he said when asked if the Special ONE team could return to World RX next year. “First we need to see how this championship will carry on, then we will be able to take a decision.”
As for the final two rounds of the Extreme E season, which take place on December 2-3, Loeb’s participation in those remains up in the air as well with the identity of Andersson’s teammate for the trip to Chile yet to be determined.
“I think since we started together, we’ve never had any problems with the car. So why not? But nothing is decided,” Loeb admitted. “At the moment, I have time to spend in Extreme E and I enjoy it. For the future, I don’t know.
“Next year my plan is to do Dakar — I will be involved with Dacia for the preparation for the next Dakar and I don’t know how much time it will take exactly, so we’ll see.”