Red Bull: Loeb could make it in F1

Friday 21st November 2008

Five-time World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb could make it in Formula One, according to Red Bull's Daniele Casanova.

The Frenchman tried his hand at F1 at Barcelona earlier this week as reward for winning his latest World Rally title and he much impressed the Red Bull team with his eighth placed finish on the timesheets.

"I expected to be pleasantly surprised and that was the case," Casanova told Autosport.

"Sebastien has been really impressive. He has stepped into the car and not put a foot wrong from the beginning."

The 34-year old completed 82 laps without any hassles in a RB4 complete with Bridgestone slick tyres and simulated '09 levels of downforce.

Casanova hailed Loeb to be of "midfield" F1 pace and revealed that Red Bull had a rather productive session at the Spanish circuit.

"It's hard to tell the exact pace," said Casanova. "From the fastest car to the slowest there is a 25km/h difference, so clearly a lot of people are running many different configurations, including KERS, wings and tyres.

"We are the correct weight, so at a guess I would say Sebastien is running somewhere in the midfield, which is mighty impressive.

"It's obviously fun to run a driver like Sebastien, but we also got a lot of useful work done. The new tyres are things that we have only tested two or three times before and they are really quite different. The idea is that this would be a normal test for us. So he was going at a good test pace, without taking any risks."

Loeb relished the opportunity offered to him by Red Bull but denied claims that he might have a future in the sport.

"Maybe I am too old," he told Autosport.

"If I was going to do that, it's something that I should have thought about doing a few years ago. This only came about because it was an opportunity offered to me by Red Bull.

"You can't compare F1 to rallying, they are so different. It's not true that rallying is more of a comfort zone, because when I am flat-out on the stages I am concentrating just as hard as I was today."

Your Comments

grabyrdy

"In regard to Seb's comments, what fool could ever say "rallying is more of a comfort zone" ? Surely the contrary is true.

He would no doubt have been a top F1 man if the cards had fallen differently. "

touchyu2

"I agree Loeb is very exceptional if you watch WRC he is noticeably faster over the ground and very much "neater" with a lot less sliding and twitching sideways. If you remeber he was in that stadium event where Kovalainen surprised everyone and beat Schuey and Loeb I believe was a very close second. And the third Sebastian in the team!"