Stephane Sarrazin back to WRC at Tour de Corse

Stephane Sarrazin, one of the world’s most versatile racing drivers and the current driver for Toyota in the World Endurance Championship, will return to World Rally Championship during next month’s Tour de Corse, the 11th round of WRC.

The last time Sarrazin competed in WRC was nine years ago when he drove a Subaru Impreza S12 for Subaru World Rally Team in four events. Since then, he has built a career in other branches of motorsport, but still continued to compete in at least one rally each year. Last year, he was the winner of the Tour de Corse, which was the part of European Rally Championship. This year, he will come to Corsica to defend his win in a much tougher competition.

Sarrazin will drive a Ford Fiesta RS WRC entered by First Motorsport, together with the regular co-driver, Jacques-Julien Renucci. With this car they recently won the national Rally Mont-Blanc Morzine and last year they were the winners of Criterium des Cevennes. Before last year’s victory at Tour de Corse, Sarrazin competed in that famous rally four times, from 2004 to 2006 with Subaru (6th, 4th and 8th) and in 2013 with Mini Cooper S2000 (3rd).

“I’m happy to be at the start of the Tour de Corse. It’s a rally that I particularly appreciate. I’m also very pleased to return to the World Championship. Of course my objectives aren’t the same as last year. The WRC contenders are very high quality drivers! We’re going to fight with what we’ve got: a certain knowledge of the site, a perfect harmony with the team and a good understanding of the car on that type of roads. Obviously I’ll have to find the right pace again but that’s the reason why I took part in two other rallies those last couple of weeks. We want to rely on consistency: our aim is to avoid the several pitfalls that we could encounter in this edition. We’ll do the math at the end, with the idea of “rocking the boat” somewhere in our minds,” said Sarrazin.