World Rally champ Sébastien Loeb has decided not to take part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race this year, due to his WRC commitments.

Mikko Hirvonen kept out of trouble on the final day of Rally Sweden to claim his 12th victory at world championship level.

Mikko Hirvonen continues to lead Rally Sweden following what his Ford team boss Malcolm Wilson described as a career-best performance as the Finn stretched his lead over arch-rival Sebastien Loeb by more than 10 seconds.

As 2007 Formula One world champion Kimi Raikkonen prepares to make his WRC debut for the Citroen Junior Team, we stop him in the Service Park for a quick chat.

Mikko Hirvonen will start leg two of Rally Sweden with a 6.2-second lead over reigning world champion Sebastien Loeb.

Kimi Raikkonen is to make his World Rally Championship debut in his home round, Rally Finland, next month.

Pole-axed doesn’t actually even come close to describing the look on Ford boss Malcolm Wilson’s face when his driver Jari-Matti Latvala crashed on the very last corner of the Rally Poland.

The WRC, we are told, is all about new frontiers. Boldly going where no man has gone before and all that – which is certainly not a description you could apply to the local working girl who was looking for customers in the hotel bar last night.

A particularly sad friend of mine learnt to recognise a rally car just from the sound of its engine. It was a party trick with limited appeal, but the bad news for him is that he is going to have to climb a steep learning curve all over again.

World champion Sébastien Loeb crashed out of the WRC in Poland, handing Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen a gilt-edged chance to take the lead in the championship.

Jeremy Clarkson once said that one of the most embarrassing experiences of his life originated in Poland, where the World Rally Championship has just rolled into town for round eight.

In the same setting where Aesop sat and told his fables, the steady slog of Hirvonen's victory took a great chunk out of Sébastien Loeb's hare-like performance in the opening half of the season.

Coming to the end of the opening day's action on the Acropolis was rather like watching the last few minutes of The Deer Hunter.

This year's Acropolis Rally of Greece isn't, in fact, anywhere near the Acropolis. Yet Loutraki can't help but have a place in the ancient world.

Greece, and while the streets of Loutraki aren't paved with gold they are, rather bizarrely, paved with marble.

Dust. It’s something that keeps cleaners in business (apart from mine, who seems has a curiously selective blindness to the stuff) and it’s what we will all be reduced to once we meet our Maker.

If there is one car that has brought a splash of colour to the WRC this year, it's the one with the least amount of pigment on it.

After the first day in Sardinia, Sébastien Loeb is exactly where he wants to be – back in third place behind Jari-Matti Latvala and Mikko Hirvonen.

A funny thing happened on the way to Sardinia. The FIA announced that it might make the 2011 WRC a competition for cars that don't exist – quite possibly never will.

He’s adapted to F1 pretty easily, but Sébastien Buemi swapped his Toro Rosso STR4 for something quite different in Hungary on May 17.

Just how do you go about winning a championship? Let’s ask Sébastien Loeb, who is well on the way to his sixth. “If you ask me, I can’t really tell you,” he says. Well, thanks, Seb.

That’s five rallies, five wins, 50 points for Sébastien Loeb as he hopes to go undefeated throughout the championship.

WRC champion began the day in third place, behind his team-mate Dani Sordo and Mikko Hirvonen and finished the day 58.6 secs in front.

Motorsport is serious business in Argentina. So much so that one of the country’s top drivers is probably about to be voted President.

Last year, Conrad Rautenbach finished fourth in the Rally Argentina in just his second time out in the Citroen C4. This year, he's finding it harder, but he's going to fight to the end.

Even though he's sweeping the road, WRC champion Sébastien Loeb finds the conditions in Argentina to his liking.

For Conrad Rautenbach, who, like Sébastien Loeb, drives a Citroën C4 WRC in the World Rally Championship, the wilds of Argentina hold no fear.

In a magnificent two-fingered salute to lily-livered tofu-eating sportsmen worldwide, five-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb lists his favourite food and drink as 'steak and red wine'...

Normal rules of self-preservation don’t apply in Argentina, the WRC’s next stop this weekend.

Comebacks, crashes and an early scare for the champion, but in the end Sébastien Loeb triumphed at the Rally Portugal. See the weekend in pictures.

Rallies are gruelling events for all involved. Not least the hotel staff who have to have a full spread of fried, boiled, poached and toasted goodies laid out for the teams and press by 5am.

Many of the WRC's hack pack were wearing suspiciously well-ironed shirts today, some had even shaved. Such behaviour could mean only one thing: Max Mosley was in town.

Grönholm, Prodrive and Subaru’s return is a shot in the arm for WRC, but they face an almost impossible task in dislodging Sébastien Loeb and Citroën, says Nick Garton in Portugal.

World champion Sébastien Loeb has a fourth consecutive victory in his sights in Portugal.

For every motorsport idol, there are a thousand technical guidelines, rules, directives and pitfalls to render any hero an instant zero.

When Marcus Grönholm retired from WRC in 2007, Sébastien Loeb hailed him as his the toughest competitor he’d ever faced.

As the WRC arrives in the Algarve for the Rally de Portugal, the obvious question is: just who can stop the charge of Sébastien Loeb?

In the end, there was no more than a 10th of a second between Sébastien Loeb and Stefan Everts when the two multiple champions went head-to-head on the infamous Mur de Grammont.

Former WRC champion Marcus Grönholm swaps security duties in his own shopping mall for the insecurity of a return drive at Rally Portugal.

A steep, cobbled hill in Belgium will be the scene of a rather unusual contest between a WRC record-breaker and a motocross legend on Thursday, March 26.

One helmet, one co-driver, two seatbelts and one gut-wrenchingly fast car. Those are the basics of the World Rally Championship. Now you need to bone up on the smart stuff...

He may have left it to the last minute, but Sweden’s Patrik Sandell made it two from two as he elbowed past Armindo Araujo to win the P-WRC in Cyprus.

… oh go on, have a guess. Meanwhile the World Rally Championship itself is wondering just what exactly it will become.

Sébastien Loeb brought his C4 through the gravel stage of the Cyprus Rally to win the 50th race of his career and make it a clean sweep of the first three races of the 2009 season.

Winston Churchill paid tribute to those working behind the scenes during the Battle of Britain, saying: "They also serve, who only stand and wait." Clearly he would have felt quite at home in a rally Service Area.

Mikko Hirvonen and Petter Solberg were celebrating as the C4s struggled in the conditions on Day Two of the Cyprus Rally.

One thing that must be said for contemporary rallies is that they are extremely sociable occasions...

It was a case of 'catch me if you can' as Sébastien Loeb pulled out all the stops on the first day of the Cyprus Rally.

The seaside town of Limassol plays host to the WRC on an increasingly irregular basis: it's fully three years since the big boys were last in town...

The man who Sébastien Loeb dubbed “the fastest rival I ever had,” is to return to WRC at the Rally Portugal.

WRC new boy Sébastien Ogier did his employers proud again in Round Two of the championship at Rally Norway with a 10th place in the Citroën C4.

If ever there was an emphatic statement of intent, Sunday's Norwegian rally win for Sébastien Loeb was it.

The WRC champion adds yet another string to his bow with Norwegian win.

Leaving the luxury of the WRC service park, our intrepid correspondent Justin Hynes discovers the 2006 junior world rally champion Patrik Sandell ensconced in a frozen corner of Hamar...

The WRC season sees Citroën and Ford going head-to-head again, so as the teams head for Norway, The Red Bulletin looks at 10 memorable rally cars from down the ages…

Petter Solberg left everyone in his snowspray as he won the opening stage of Rally Norway 2009 on February 12. Mikko Hirvonen and Sébastien Loeb were just fractions of a second behind.

It's difficult to find anything to talk about after a WRC weekend like the one that just went by in Ireland.

The middle of Saturday afternoon and it's dark, getting darker by the minute...

Now, I know, and probably you do too, that Sébastien Löeb hates being compared with Michael Schumacher. But what does he expect?

Defending champion Sébastien Loeb secured a 44.4-second lead over Citröen teammate Dani Sordo on day one of the WRC.

Junior World Rally Champion Sébastien Ogier has won the Monte Carlo Rally, despite having no experience of Super 2000 machinery prior to the start of the event.

Still forge ahead and never think of the defeat

Believe in yourself

Believe in yourself

The fifth round of the 2009 World Rally Championship rolls into Argentina.

The 4th round of the 2009 World Rally Championship arrives in Portugal.

The third round of the 2009 World Rally Championship drives into Limassol.