Pierre-Louis Loubet feels disappointment with the fact that he eventually retired from Rallye Monte Carlo, but he keeps the positive things as his stage times were close to his teammate's.
The Corsican driver secured his first full-time programme in WRC and joined Ott Tanak at M-Sport Ford for 2023. His season did not start well as he lost over one minute in Stage 5 due to the fact that he had no power steering after hitting a rock. Despite the fact that there was a tyre fitting zone and his mechanics had the chance to fix this problem for the afternoon, his Puma continued to carry this issue, therefore he had to drive without power steering for three stages. On Saturday morning, he hit a barrier on the outside of the final corner in Stage 9 resulting in damaging heavily the rear right of his car and he had to retire from the day. On Sunday, he restarted under the regulations of Rally2, but he was forced to retire before the start of Stage 17 due to a water leak.
"You have some weekends when you are just off the pace, and that's much worse than anything else", Loubet said.
"I am just disappointed because we tried so hard and at the end we got nothing - not even a point.
"But, if you told me last week that on my first Monte, I would be able to be setting similar pace with Ott, I would sign immediately.
"Okay, it was his first time in the car, but he knows the stages.
"We showed that the pace was there, but we had, unfortunately, very bad luck this weekend all round.
"Honestly, there's not a lot we can do, but I think I made a good step on Tarmac now".
Source: wrc.com
Photo Credits: M-Sport
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