World Rally champ Sébastien Loeb has decided not to take part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race this year, due to his WRC commitments.

For almost a decade, the name ‘Kimi’ has been shorthand for outrageous F1 speed and car control. This year, with a switch to the Red Bull Junior World Rally Team, he reckons he’s taken on the biggest challenge of his career

Kimi Raikkonen is to make his World Rally Championship debut in his home round, Rally Finland, next month.

Pole-axed doesn’t actually even come close to describing the look on Ford boss Malcolm Wilson’s face when his driver Jari-Matti Latvala crashed on the very last corner of the Rally Poland.

The WRC, we are told, is all about new frontiers. Boldly going where no man has gone before and all that – which is certainly not a description you could apply to the local working girl who was looking for customers in the hotel bar last night.

A particularly sad friend of mine learnt to recognise a rally car just from the sound of its engine. It was a party trick with limited appeal, but the bad news for him is that he is going to have to climb a steep learning curve all over again.

World champion Sébastien Loeb crashed out of the WRC in Poland, handing Ford’s Mikko Hirvonen a gilt-edged chance to take the lead in the championship.

Jeremy Clarkson once said that one of the most embarrassing experiences of his life originated in Poland, where the World Rally Championship has just rolled into town for round eight.

In the same setting where Aesop sat and told his fables, the steady slog of Hirvonen's victory took a great chunk out of Sébastien Loeb's hare-like performance in the opening half of the season.

Coming to the end of the opening day's action on the Acropolis was rather like watching the last few minutes of The Deer Hunter.