Repco Rally New Zealand Media statement re 2008 FIA World Rally Championship Post-event, Rally Japan Release: 4 November 2008 A three day battle over the narrow roads of Japan's northern island of Hokkaido has seen the BP Ford World Rally Team claim the top two positions in the penultimate round of the 2008 FIA World Rally Championship (WRC).

With a third place overall, Citroen's Sbastien Loeb secured the WRC drivers' championship title for a record fifth consecutive time. A start-to-finish victory by Finland's Mikko Hirvonen in the BP Ford was not enough to reignite his chances in the drivers' championship. Hirvonen started 14 points behind Loeb and needed the highly successful Frenchman to finish lower than third position.

However Hirvonen's Rally Japan win leaves him second for the season and keeps the manufacturers' battle alive for Ford against current leaders Citron with just Rally Great Britain to run in early December to complete the season.

Despite heavy rain shortening the first day of competition, Hirvonen and co-driver Jarmo Lehtinen won all but one stage and continued their domination for the remainder of the rally.

Thirty-one seconds behind, BP Ford team-mates Jari-Matti Latvala and Miikka Anttila completed the Ford Focus one-two while the Citroen C4 of Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena finished two minutes 30 seconds in arrears.

"It's a fantastic feeling," said the 34-year old Loeb, whose ten point lead over Hirvonen means that even if Hirvonen should win Rally Great Britain and Loeb fail to score, the Frenchman's ten victories this season would still see him victorious in the drivers' championship.

Loeb is the first driver in history with five consecutive championship victories - from just six full WRC campaigns. "Along with Daniel and everyone in the team, the objective we set ourselves for this year was to win another world crown, and it's tremendously satisfying to have met that target today. I really wanted to wrap up the title here in Japan to enable us to go into Wales Rally GB with a totally free mind.

That made the weekend very long and very frustrating, and I have to say that it wasn't much fun. Our C4 and our Pirelli tyres functioned very well together on this event, though, and we did what we could to keep any thoughts about the championship out of our minds, but it wasn't easy.

The title just seemed to loom larger after every stage, and it was well worth the wait in the end!" In fourth position was the first of the Japanese teams, Subaru's Chris Atkinson, while Suzuki scored their best-ever finish with Per-Gunnar Andersson and Toni Gardemeister finishing fifth and sixth respectively in the SX4 WRC. Contested over a truncated 310.61km of gravel to the south and east of host city Sapporo, the new base and roads to the fifth running of the event provided a heartbreaking ending to the campaigns of Subaru's Petter Solberg and Stobart Ford driver Francois Duval, both of whom crashed.

Duval's co-driver was airlifted to hospital with a fractured pelvis and tibia. Solberg returned to finish eighth. Rally Japan was also the penultimate round of the Production World Rally Championship (P-WRC) and the Ralliart New Zealand entry of Juho Hanninen took the round win, their third of the season from five events. While the field was led by 18-year-old Russian Evgeniy Novikov for the majority of the event, Hanninen clawed back from mid-field after tussling with local Toshi Arai to take the top spot after the final stage.

The WRC teams have a one month break before the final event for the season, a traditionally cold and wet Wales Rally Great Britain (5-7 December). With the WRC drivers' title decided, the Citroen Total WRT lead in the manufacturers' standings will come under pressure from the BP Ford Abu Dhabi World Rally Team.