World RX #GOAT Top Ten Countdown: Sébastien Loeb (5th)

5th: Sébastien Loeb

World RX Titles: 0
World RX Wins: 2
World RX Podiums: 17
Best Championship Finish: 4th (2017/2018)

The world’s most successful rally driver – with an unrivalled 80 WRC event wins and nine consecutive World Championship titles to his name – Sébastien Loeb has gained something of a reputation for mastering whatever motorsport discipline he turns his hand to. Rallycross included.

A gold medal recipient at the 2012 X Games in California, Loeb went on to contest his home round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship at Lohéac in 2013 behind the wheel of a Citroën DS3.

He subsequently joined the factory-backed Team Peugeot-Hansen outfit for a full season of World RX competition in 2016. A maiden podium finish in Belgium would be the first of four that year – including a breakthrough victory in Latvia – propelling the Frenchman to fifth in the overall standings ahead of team-mate Timmy Hansen, the 2015 championship runner-up and a driver who would go on to clinch the Drivers’ crown in 2019.

The next year yielded six rostrum results and an improvement to fourth in the title table, which Loeb matched in his final campaign in the series in 2018 as Peugeot took its programme in-house under the Team Peugeot Total banner.

A second career triumph at Mettet was the highlight of what would prove to be the Haguenau native’s finest season in the championship, and he concluded his short but sparkling stint in World RX with a grand total of 17 podium appearances – almost a 50 per cent strike rate, a statistic bettered only by multiple world champions Johan Kristoffersson and Petter Solberg.