Pierre-Louis Loubet announced today that Benjamin Veillas will be his new co-driver after the first one parted ways with Nicolas Gilsoul last week.
Loubet and Gilsoul started their partnership in 2022 with their participation at Rallye National Hivernal du Dévoluy after his former co-driver, Vincent Landais, announced that he would join Sebastien Ogier at last year's Rally Japan with the view of navigating the seven-time WRC Champion on his partial campaign with Toyota in 2023. After their first outing together on the French championship, Loubet and Gilsoul decided to continue their collaboration in 2023 as the Corsican driver secured his first full-season programme in World Rally Championship with M-Sport Ford this year. However, their season was far from perfect as they had many crashes and problems which were caused by Loubet's mistakes or by reliability issues, therefore the pair decided to terminate prematurely their partnership, just eleven days before the start of Central European Rally. Benjamin Veillas was alongside Loubet during his pre-event test with the Ford Puma Rally1 for the penultimate round of this year's championship which will be held in three countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany). Finally, it must be mentioned that Veillas was Stephane Lefebvre's and Eric Camilli's co-driver in the past while he was part of Sebastien Ogier's gravel crew when the last one was competing with Julien Ingrassia, but their paths crossed in 2022 and managed to win their first event together in Spain.
"The test was good", Loubet said.
"The weather was sunny, it was nice – the feeling was good.
"For next week, I don’t want to think too much to the result.
"With a new co-driver I just want to make a good rally.
"It's the first rally with Benjamin, so I try to build the confidence and do a normal rally".
Source: wrc.com
Photo Credits: Toyota
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