Pierre-Louis Loubet believes that contesting another winter rally in his Ford Puma Rally1 before Rally Sweden would have helped his preparation, and will request to do so next year.
Driving M-Sport’s second car, Loubet finished sixth in Sweden, some six minutes down on his victorious team-mate Ott Tänak. However, almost half of that time was lost on the final stage when he had to resort to EV mode.
It was only the second time Loubet had contested the specialist snow event so his target had always been to drive steadily and make no mistakes to reach the finish and build experience.
But he struggled to find confidence in the car after a lack of pre-event running on snow, while some drivers – including Tänak – clocked up miles contesting national rallies.
“It’s OK. Some stages were not OK like the first one in the loop,” was Loubet’s appraisal of his progress when speaking to DirtFish after Rally Sweden’s second day.
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“The pace in both passes was not very good, difficult to understand why. But the long one, in the morning we were without hybrid and in the afternoon, with [hybrid], the pace was much better.
“I think it was 0.2 or 0.3 seconds per kilometer, so it was much better than yesterday with this [worse] road position.
“And that means I did a good step; still a bit too far but I think about the driving style, it’s a bit better, it’s more about commitment now and to be a bit more confident. But I think I understand a lot of things now.”
Asked how difficult it is to find total confidence in such conditions, Loubet replied: “It’s just driving. On a rally like that, honestly you need… for next year, for sure I will ask to do a pre-rally event.
“That will help a lot to try many, many things because I don’t have for the moment the confidence to change a lot of things on the car. Because I’m sure what I have, it for sure is quite different from Ott. So I think a small rally will help to try some stuff.”
