After a month’s hiatus, Sebastien Loeb Racing crossed the Atlantic and arrived in Canada for the seventh round of the World Rallycross Championship. Grégoire Demoustier was relatively satisfied with his weekend despite contrasting performances in the Trois Rivières Grand Prix. He can’t wait for Lohéac at the beginning of September where the Alsatian team will be racing on home turf. In the meantime, Greg would like to introduce readers to Théo Caniard, the team’s engineer who looks after the engines.
Grégoire Demoustier (Sébastien Loeb Racing driver): “My performances were better than in Sweden and our times were pretty close to those of the fastest drivers. Once again we made a lot of progress during the weekend both in terms of driving and honing the car’s setup. We learned a lot from Sweden and the SLR team and I continued to work together. I’m not unhappy with the weekend. We hadn’t raced for a month and I was delighted to meet up with the team members again; it did me a great deal of good. Unfortunately, we still have a month to wait before going to Lohéac. It’s a circuit I know, and in addition it’s in France so I’m really looking forward to the event and I hope to score better results.”
Team story
From Mettet to Lohéac by way of Silverstone and Riga, Greg opens the doors of Sébastien Loeb Racing to you by spotlighting a member of his team race after race. This week it’s the turn of the team’s engine engineer, Théo Caniard.
“Now it’s time for the presentation of a member of the team and after Pierre, Yannick, Maxime and Jacques, it’s Théo’s turn. He’s our engine engineer. He joined us from Oreca and comes to every race with us. He’s a young engineer so that makes our relationship easier as we’re from the same generation. We get on really well and like all the team members he’s very professional. We work hard together, which doesn’t prevent us from having a good laugh!”
Théo Caniard (Oreca engine engineer posted to Sébastien Loeb Racing): “I joined the team in April at the first round of the World Rallycross Championship in Barcelona. I work for Oreca, but I’ve been posted to SLR as we equip Grégoire’s 208 WXR with the only client engine in the field. We get on pretty well together and it’s easy with the ambience in the team. I’ve been lucky enough to work in different branches of motor sport so I’d already met certain team members like Pierre Arnaud. It’s a new, very dynamic squad. Everybody’s discovering rallycross this season and all the guys work really hard and invest a lot of energy. My job at the events is pretty simple. Of course, I have to make sure that the engine’s running properly, but I also have to get the maximum amount of performance out of it so that Greg has a good car that’s easy to drive. Since the beginning of the season we’ve made a lot of progress and the last test session in Sweden was particularly fruitful. This weekend on the Trois Rivières circuit we achieved 200 km/h like our rivals, the works teams! I’d like to underline the hard work of the mechanics which enabled us to race in Q2 after Greg’s collision in Q1. It’s proof that they did a great job.”