French motorsport federation the FFSA has confirmed Hyundai Junior driver Pierre-Louis Loubet’s revised 2020 World Rally Championship schedule, with his original nine-round campaign condensed to four events.
Loubet, the latest in a long line of drivers with national federation support that includes world champions Sébastien Loeb and Sébastien Ogier, was set to compete in the majority of 2020 WRC events with a 2C Competition-prepared i20 Coupe WRC.
His campaign was originally scheduled to start with the now-canceled Rally Portugal but with the radical calendar restructure brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Loubet’s new itinerary is made up of only four rallies.
Those four events could potentially become three depending on how the ongoing questions over Rally Turkey play out.
Rally Estonia (September 7-9) will mark Loubet’s WRC debut in the top class, stepping up from the WRC2 division he won last year. Turkey (September 24-27), Germany (October 15-18) and Italy (October 29 – November 1) complete his four-round WRC schedule.
Unlike fellow WRC junior drivers Takamoto Katsuta at Toyota and Gus Greensmith at M-Sport – both of whom have competed in at least one rally this year – Loubet is yet to turn a wheel in competition in 2020, his run to 15th on Rallye du Condroz last November his most recent rally.
Loubet is being given two rallies in Italy as a warm-up to his part-time WRC campaign. He will compete against Hyundai factory driver Dani Sordo and M-Sport customer “Pedro” on Rally di Roma’s RallyStars event for WRC-spec cars this weekend, followed by another run in an i20 WRC on Rally di Alba the following weekend.
