WRC 2013 Rally Sweden Recap

Last weekend’s Rally Sweden showed off the current crop of up an coming drivers to their fullest extent. With Sebastien The Great focusing on greener and less sideways pastures, will Sebastien The Younger emerge as the new king of the WRC? Hit the jump for a few words, many pictures and a few videos of the Scandinavian circus that is WRC’s Rally Sweden.

Trying to cover WRC, or any non-American motorsport for that matter, is an exercise in frustration. Trying to find decent video coverage is difficult and sadly the FIA doesn’t seem to think that Infinite Garage is a big enough deal to let us use any of their official content.

That being said, I think I’ll let the pictures and videos do most of the leg work, so sit back and enjoy Rally Sweden.

I’ll get the important details over with right away, yes a French guy named Sebastien stood on the top step of the podium after three days of racing, but he wasn’t driving a Citreon. Sebastien Ogier brought the VW Polo R home if first place, becoming only the second non-Scandanavian winner of the Swedish event, the other one being that other Sebastien. Ogier looked comfortable and his dominant finish was over 40 seconds faster than the second place of nine time champion Sebastien Loeb.

It’s going to be an interesting season, with Loeb only participating in a handful of events, the likes of Latvala, Hirvonen and a newly inspired Mads Ostberg, are sure too keep Ogier and the VW Team looking over their shoulders.

Rally Sweden is unique in that it requires specially prepared tires and the drivers need to be more aggressive with the car than is typical in a modern rally event. Check out this unofficial video for some of the best sights and sounds of Rally Sweden.

Each tire is specially constructed with nearly 400 studs to deal with the snow and ice as they race along the Swedish countryside at speeds exceeding 100mph,.

Courtesy: M-Sport

The spikes aren’t the only thing keeping the cars on the road. The tall snowbanks alongside the roads act like bumpers and the drivers use them to maintain speed around the corner. Of course you can have too much of a good thing and pushing too hard into the snow bank sucks the car off the road and, as Mikko Hirvonen’s found out on Stage 1, sometimes the car ends up on it’s roof.

I’m not really sure I have a lot more to say so I’ll just leave you with some pictures of Rally Sweden and a short play list of official WRC videos (it’s really a shame that the official YouTube WRC Channel is so stingy with it’s content).

Courtesy: M-Sport

Courtesy: M-Sport

Copyright