Pierre-Louis Loubet has chosen Sébastien Ogier’s former co-driver Benjamin Veillas to replace Nicolas Gilsoul, starting from next weekend’s Central European Rally.
Loubet and Gilsoul teamed up at the top of the 2023 World Rally Championship as, ironically, Vincent Landais left Loubet to replace Veillas as Ogier’s co-driver at Toyota.
After a breakthrough 2022 where Loubet rebuilt his reputation following a disastrous 2021 season, the Frenchman’s first full-time campaign with M-Sport Ford has been a trying affair with mechanical issues and driving mistakes leaving him 11th in the championship with a best result of sixth.
Last week Loubet announced that he and Gilsoul – a 13-time WRC winner alongside Thierry Neuville – were separating; an announcement that came in the wake of a spectacular crash on Rally Chile where some form of miscommunication occurred in the car.
Speaking to DirtFish following a successful first test with Veillas, Loubet declined to talk about his reasons for the split with Gilsoul, but did suggest it was “impossible” for the partnership to continue.
“It’s not something that I wanted [to change a co-driver] but it is like it is, so now we need to do it.,” Loubet said.
“Anyway it’s been difficult for me. I did a good year in 2022 to change a co-driver, so it’s never easy, it’s never something we would like to do.
“For every driver it creates a bit of instability, but it was for me impossible to continue.”
Asked how things went with Veillas – who has five starts and one victory in a Rally1 car – Loubet replied: “With Benjy during the test everything was fine, so very happy about it.
“For the rally it will be the first with Benjamin so [I’ll] try just to build the confidence and to just try to do a normal rally.
“Since the beginning of the year it’s been a bit tough from that but let’s see.”
Considering he’s having to adapt to a new co-driver, Loubet has measured expectations for CER.
“Honestly after the route that we take, after a difficult season, with a new co-driver, I will just try to do a good rally but in terms of position it’s not the time,” he said.
“I think in Chile we started to go for it as the pace was there, we were leading the stage before the crash but it didn’t work out.
“I will say nothing about results, it’s just to go through, get back the confidence and try to build for the future.”
Veillas has started three rallies this year since splitting with Ogier one year ago in the wake of their Rally Spain together. All three of them have been in France.
