When a ‘part-time’ driver won the WRC with a privateer team

Sébastien Ogier’s World Rally Championship success on a part-time season this year was nothing short of incredible. But he did it with the might of a fully-fledged manufacturer (Toyota) behind him.

You could therefore argue that what Sébastien Loeb managed (when he missed four rounds through injury) in 2006 was even more impressive – considering the Xsara WRC he was driving was not run by Citroën’s full factory effort, but by Kronos Racing instead.

However, like with any sporting story, all isn’t always what it seems. For while a privateer outfit fielding Loeb and beating Ford and Marcus Grönholm was remarkable, behind-the-scenes tension with Citroën, financial strain and obviously Loeb’s off-event accident made it far from a straightforward affair.

This is the story of Kronos’ 2006, told by the man at the helm of the operation: Marc Van Dalen.

How Kronos got Citroën’s WRC program

Kronos Racing was founded in the 1990s predominantly as a racing team, but over the years began to branch into rallying too. Working closely with Peugeot, Kronos found success with the 206 WRC through drivers like Simon Jean-Joseph and Bruno Thiry who claimed the 2003 European Rally Championship with the squad.

There was a WRC program too, but the 206 Kronos was running was not the same specification as the ones Marcus Grönholm, Richard Burns et al were driving for Peugeot.

Unable to receive an equal machine, Van Dalen began talking to PSA stablemate Citroën and a deal was done for Kronos to run the all-new C2 Super 1600 in the French Rally Championship. But it was a negotiation between Van Dalen and, strangely, Peugeot driver Grönholm that truly unlocked the pathway for Kronos’ future program.

“I was pushing Citroën to say rent me a Xsara. I will find sponsors and I will find help. Please rent me a Xsara,” Van Dalen tells DirtFish. “And I was pushing [Guy] Fréquelin at that time to do that. It was complicated because he never did it before, but they rented me a Xsara for two races: Finland and Sardinia.

“At that time I was a good friend of Marcus Grönholm, so I said to Marcus, ‘You don’t have a young, talented driver and you can help him?’ He said yes, so he was helping me to find a budget for [Juuso] Pykälistö. It’s a nice story. But finally, we made that deal.

“I mean, the story was nice because at that time Grönholm was the official Peugeot driver. And at that time it was a war between Peugeot and Citroën. It was the same family, but they hated each other. So it was a big fight.

“So I had some meetings with Marcus, to try to help me to run his protégé in a Citroën. Therefore we met each other at a different hotel. He said, ‘nobody can see us’. It was like this. It was a crazy situation. But we did it at the end, and we run two rallies. Finland, he was third overall after two stages, I think, but the engine blew up or something like this. It was a rare thing with the Citroën, but that happened, so OK.

“And in Sardinia, he went off, I think, on the second stage. The guy was quite good, but probably too much pressure, I don’t know, I don’t remember.”

The key thing for Kronos though was it had proved to Citroën it was able to run Xsaras in the world championship. Van Dalen kept pushing Fréquelin and eventually, using some initiative, he had what he was looking for.

“The real situation is that at the end of October or November, I didn’t have anything,” Van Dalen recalls. “So I knew that the girl in charge of OMV will be in Australia for the last rally in 2004. I knew that she will be there because she was backing Manfred [Stohl] who was fighting for the world title in Group N.

“So I took a plane, I go to Australia to watch the rally and I will do my best to meet that girl and to tell her ‘you have to follow me next year’. And I did. My problem is that we signed for two cars – one car for let’s say 10 events and another car for five, but she paid for one.

“I signed the contract and we started the season with Manfred. We made some tests but Monte Carlo was not so good. So after Monte Carlo, because he was not shining, she called me and said, ‘If it’s like this all the season, I stop the contract’. I said, ‘Why did you say that?’ She told me, ‘We have Xsara, so we have to win’. I said, ‘OK, but Manfred is learning the Xsara, he’s not Sébastien, so wait a little bit’. It was complicated, a lot of pressure.”

But then came Cyprus in May.

“We were there with my team, with only eight people altogether, against Subaru, Peugeot, Ford, at that time Citroën, and they were all 50 people at least. The race was very complicated because it was, that year, very, very rough. A lot of stones, holes, and everything around.

“Finally, we finished second overall. And it was unbelievable because Loeb won and Manfred finished second. And I remember the guy from the organization called me before the podium and said, ‘Do you have any Austrian flag? Because we were not prepared for it.’ So for us, it was like a victory. You can imagine, we were there with only eight people in front of the works team and we finished second. It was just a dream for us.

“And in the meantime, I was chasing to find another driver with budget for the second car, because I have a contract that said if I don’t find another car, I will be in trouble. And finally, with that good result, I was pushing Xavier Pons, the Spanish guy, to follow us, and he signed with his sponsors for five rallies and finally we make that year with two Xsaras.

“Stohl also finished third in Australia at the end of the year and Pons was fighting for the podium in Catalonia so it was a good year for us. In the meantime we were in charge of the two C2 Super 1600 for [Kris] Meeke and [Dani] Sordo [in Junior WRC]. So we won the championship also, so it was quite a good year for us.”

Everything was on the up, and Van Dalen spied an opportunity.

The opportunity

At the end of 2004, the PSA Group – which owned both Peugeot and Citroën at the time – announced that both of its manufacturer teams would be leaving the WRC at the end of 2005.

Peugeot followed through; Citroën ultimately didn’t, but it wouldn’t officially compete in 2006. Instead, it elected to focus on developing the all-new C4 WRC for competition in 2007.

There were still two Xsaras – and a star driver in Loeb, at this point a two-time world champion – ready to go though. What would happen to them?

Van Dalen: “It was the period where PSA were announcing that they will stop everything in motor racing, as you remember, like a shock for everybody. And so they were all in trouble with that. And I went to Guy, and I said, ‘Guy, I’m sure I can find some partners. You saw what we can do. Give me Loeb for free and I will find the money to run the cars.’

“He said, ‘It’s impossible to find that,’ but I said, ‘I will do it. I will do it. Trust me’. And I was pushing like hell. And at that time I was in contact with Gauloises because I was running Simon Jean-Joseph in Gauloises colors with the 206. So I knew them quite well, and it’s the same group as Bastos which we had a very good history with too. And so I was pushing Gauloises to say ‘this is a real opportunity for you’, because they were also behind at that time [Valentino] Rossi in MotoGP. So I told them, ‘Please, you have to join us. It’s a huge opportunity for you to be the partners of the most famous rally driver in the world, which is French.’

“So I was pushing, pushing, pushing, it was like a crazy game. Because at the same time, Sébastien, he didn’t know what he was going to do. If I’m right, he was testing the Focus for Malcolm, so it was complicated. So I was pushing Guy, but Guy played a double jeu [double game] at that time, which I didn’t know at the time.

“So he was asking Oreca to say, ‘Can you do the Xsara for me?’ And Oreca said, ‘Yes, I can do that’. So he came back to me and said, ‘You want to run the Xsara? You find the partners?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Yeah, but your price is a little bit too high, so I have another team who is ready to do that.’

“I said, ‘But this is not fair,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, but that’s life.’ So I was fighting like crazy, crazy. You cannot imagine.”

In the end, Kronos got a deal over the line – albeit just days before entries closed for the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally.

The Belgian team would rent the cars from Citroën Racing and would provide all of the mechanics. In return, Citroën gave Kronos Loeb’s services and paid for his salary, while also providing some engineers for extra on-event support.

But the driver of the second car was fully Van Dalen’s responsibility. Xevi Pons was the answer.

“I convinced the father of Xavier Pons to pay a lot of money, a lot of millions, to become the partner of Sébastien Loeb in the Gauloise cars, so it was like a crazy thing,” Van Dalen explains.

“So finally, we signed everything and we were in Monte Carlo in 2006 with the new colors, with Séb and with all the team. And it was, honestly, like a dream for us coming from nothing and some years after to be running the World Rally Champion it was like crazy.

“Honestly, it was probably one of the most beautiful results or achievements for us, but in the meantime, it was like a nightmare because we’re losing money and everything you cannot imagine. At the end of the year, we were without any single penny anymore. It was like crazy.”

The politics

We all know Kronos ended up surviving after 2006, but that’s the power of hindsight. At the time, the stress was unbelievable for the entire team – not least because of things ramping up behind the scenes.

“Today, no [I don’t regret it],” Van Dalen says. “But if I have to do it again, I will be less, how can I say, innocent. Because the political game was so involved. And I can tell you a story which is exactly the situation, and easy to understand.

“At that time, there was a nice article in L’Equipe magazine, which is one of the most famous in France, with the interview of Sébastien. It was after Corsica or before Corsica, I can’t quite remember, but we had at that time five victories in a row or something like this, so everything went well. He was happy.

“And the interviewer of Sébastien said, ‘Tell us a little bit about this year, the difference with the works team from last year. What’s the difference for you because you’re leading the championship? So I think it’s going well.’ And he says, ‘Yes, it’s a smaller team, but we have a very good relationship. Everything went well. And, honestly, I didn’t feel many differences for me because I’m leading and I’m comfortable, they take care of me and of what I need,’ and so on and so on.

“So everything was happy, except that the big boss of Citroën read that and he said to Fréquelin, ‘You have to come to me and we have to discuss.’ I learned this story after. And he went to Fréquelin and said, ‘So Guy, you want to come back next year? Yes, OK. Could you remind me the price we paid last year, 2005, to become world champion with our official team?’ and so on and so on. I don’t remember the numbers, it was around, let’s say, 60 million euros.

“All right, 60 million. ‘OK. And this year, what we pay for this deal with Kronos and so on?’ We pay Loeb’s salary, but we receive money from Total. We give something, let’s say, I don’t know, six million or 10 million maximum, something like this. And he said, ‘OK, I read what Loeb says. He’s very happy. It’s the same [as last year with the official team]. So I make, for me, a big economy of 40 million compared to last year [for the same result], so why do I have to come back next year? We have to follow with them [Kronos]. It’s much more economic for us. But anyway, any time if we do that, it’s half of the budget that you ask me for next year. So I want to go that way for the future.’”

Naturally, this made things awkward. Loeb and Kronos were doing everything they could to get a world title across the line, but was it necessarily in Fréquelin’s best interests for them to succeed and therefore make a potential mockery of the official program he was in charge of?

“From that time onwards until the end of the year, the boss of Citroën Sport and all the people around, tried everything to kill us. You cannot imagine. Like crazy,” Van Dalen claims.

“And I remember at the end of the year we had a meeting and arrived there very disappointed because we were world champion, but we were losing so much money. It was like crazy, this crazy situation. And we were in a room waiting for them, sitting there, and we listened outside and they said, ‘What do we have now? We are meeting with Kronos. Ah, they are still alive!?’ You know, something like this.

“This is political, and I’m sure that if I was in Guy’s situation, probably I would do the same. But when you have the patience, and you were a small team, and it was crazy to imagine to become world champion even if you have Loeb, because it was at that time 14 rallies. I mean, many different places to arrange on the logistical side.

“I mean, my guys were the same team building the car in the workshop and on the rally. It was unbelievable work for everybody to achieve those things, but behind the scenes, in a political way… oh, you cannot imagine. You cannot imagine. But it was a good learning for me.”

The complication

On the stages, it wasn’t as if everything was plain sailing either.

It seemed to be heading that way. Despite Ford new boy Grönholm winning both Monte Carlo and Sweden in his brand-new Focus WRC, Loeb responded with eight victories at the next 10 rallies, including five wins on the bounce.

After Cyprus, he led Grönholm by 35 points (in the era when a victory was worth 10 points) with just four rallies remaining, while Kronos Citroën World Rally Team led Ford by seven.

But then Loeb had his ‘bike’ accident at home, was out for the rest of the season and thus jeopardized everything he and Kronos had worked towards.

“Oh, it was like crazy,” Van Dalen adds. “I remember well: I was in my office and I received a call to say with Séb, there’ll be a little problem. Is that a joke or what? And honestly, my first reaction was, is that something… is it true or is it a political decision again? Is it really true or is it something they do to be sure that we’re not going to be champion or what? I don’t know.

“But then I spoke to Séb and he explained the situation. I said, ‘OK, what can we do? That’s life.’

“He was saying to everybody that it was with a bike, but everybody knows that it was with a motorbike,” Van Dalen smiles. “We were very lucky that Marcus made a mistake in Australia, otherwise he would have been champion in place of Sébastien, for sure.”

One upside to Loeb’s absence was the opportunity to work with another rallying legend: Colin McRae. The Scot stepped into the Frenchman’s Xsara in Turkey in what, sadly, was his final event in the WRC.

“I knew Colin before because he was backing Kris Meeke a lot,” Van Dalen says. “He was helping a lot Kris before with the C2 Super 16. So I met him in many rallies and I discovered a fantastic guy, human side, so generous with everybody. So, I mean, a really fantastic guy.

“Human side is a fantastic guy – like Kris is, I mean, same style, exactly. Kris is a little bit like his son. He was very behind him at that time. I remember he was helping very much.”

Loeb of course did secure the championship despite missing the last four rallies, but Ford usurped Kronos in the teams’ standings.

What it meant to be world champions

That didn’t really matter, though. All of that effort to pull the program off was vindicated by Loeb winning his third of nine titles – albeit in bizarre circumstances, tuning in via video link from home in Switzerland while the WRC was half the world away in Australia.

Van Dalen enjoyed experiencing Loeb’s magic first-hand.

“He’s not complicated, he’s a simple guy. Honestly, like you and me, but it’s just… it’s never in doubt. Never. He knows, he knows. I never saw him in doubt for anything, for any decision. And his memory, it’s amazing.

“Honestly, the guys remember many things around events and him. I have a story about that with his pacenotes, it was amazing. I remember we went to Sweden, it was the second rally. And it was a new shakedown, full of snow. And before that, I asked him, ‘Are you ready to take Dani Sordo with you into the car during the shakedown?’ Because that was the very first rally for Dani on snow, and he didn’t have so much experience. ‘So could you take him with you into your car?’ And he said, ‘Yes, let me make some passes with Daniel [Elena] and then I will switch to Dani.’

“After three passes he asked me to send Dani. And together with Daniel Elena, we said to Séb, ‘Are you sure you know the road already?’ ‘Yes, yes, I know’. And Daniel said, ‘OK, read me the notes’. And he was reading all the notes!

“That guy has a fantastic memory, he’s a very clever guy, so he’s very clever and has no doubts. That’s the reason why he’s talented for sure, and all together he’s very strong. But it was a nice discovery for me to see that at that time he was there in his car, only two or three passes of the shakedown. It was not a short shakedown, it was something like four or six kilometers. And it was full of snow – you can imagine, it’s not easy. But he did it, so nice story.”

Loeb would go back to Citroën’s manufacturer effort from 2007 and dominate the WRC once more with the C4, and latterly the DS3 WRC.

Kronos would not run such a program again, but the very fact it achieved what it did was the ultimate example of believing in yourself.

“If you enter Kronos, we are here for 30 years already, the first word you see is ‘sky is the limit’. So we say, ‘OK, why not? Why not? I’m sure we were able to do that.’ Everybody has the motivation. Everybody was fully committed to do that. So everybody was motivated like never [before] because we knew that we are a very small team with a majority of Belgian people.

“OK, we’d been involved in the WRC with nice drivers like Stohl or Pons, but not with Loeb, who was at that time the king, like Ogier today. So we cannot f*** up. There is no other choice. We have to win. We have to make the job. We have to do it.

“It was a real challenge for us, because he [Loeb] was the best for sure, but also he was with the best team, because at that time the Citroën team was for sure the best team with the best engineers, the best car – they make a fantastic job. So we were there and said, ‘OK, now we have to be at the level. How can we do that?’

“Just trust in you and do the best you can. And I remember that I was saying to all my team: ‘Don’t be shy. Make your job as usual. You are a good team. You are good guys. You know what you have to do and you can do it. Be motivated, concentrated, and it will work.’ And it was the case. So it’s just a question of trust in your team, and that everybody involved in the team trusts in themselves, and that’s what they did at the end.

“I remember I received a fantastic letter from the team who make it before us, it was David Sutton. In ’81 they won the world championship with Ari Vatanen as a privateer team with the Escort. And they wrote me a letter to say ‘welcome to the club’. We were the only two teams winning a world championship in rally as privateers, so it was a very nice letter to receive.”

And what a story to look back on, 20 years since it all began.