Race of Champions | Sebastien Loeb beats Sebastian Vettel to become the champion of champions for a fourth time
Sebastien Loeb became the Champion of Champions 2022 after defeating Sebastian Vettel 3-1 in today´s final.
After yesterday´s Nations Cup, Drivers competed against each other to crown the Champion of Champions 2022 in Pite Havsbad for this year´s Snow+Ice Challenge in Sweden. The challenging conditions of the track left no room for mistakes and made each heat between the drivers entertaining until the very end.
Mick Schumacher, who had a great performance yesterday representing Team Germany, finished early today after losing his first heat (+1.4) to W-series 2021 champion Jamie Chadwick. Former legend Mika Hakkinen, who is no foreigner to extreme weather was defeated (+3.1) by Jimmie Johnson yesterday´s runner up from Team USA and David Coulthard lost by a small margin to Danish Le Mas record holder Tom Kristensen.
It was Sebastian Vettel 7 times winner of the nations cup with Michael Schumacher and one-time Champion of Champions in 2015 who would make it to the finals after defeating by 2.2 second W-Series driver and Valtteri Bottas' replacement Emma Kimiläinen. Then, the German would drive his way through the semifinals against American Colton Herta who knocked him out of the Nations Cup, Seb won on aggregate times after the second heat.
In the semifinals against Tom Kristensen, fotune played against the Danish after his electric car failed to complete the first heat and then Sebastian would win the second heat by 2.0 seconds to make it to the Finals.
The other Seb, Sebastien Loeb drove his way through against fellow rally drivers Peter Solberg and Oliver Solberg in the quarter finals and Mattias Ekström in the semifinals.
It was the battle of the Sebs to crown the Champion of Champions, nine time back-to-back rally world champion Sebastien Loeb against four time back-to-back F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel. The best out of five would be the 2022 Champion of Champions. It was a difficult challenge for the F1 driver taking into account the expertise of the rally ace under these conditions.
Sebastian Vettel couldn´t take it to the tie-break heat after losing 3-1 to Loeb.
“Was I confident to win? No, but I got more and more confident,” said Loeb during the press conference.
Sebastian Vettel celebrated his recovery after yesterday´s early defeat, “I let team Germany down yesterday. So, I think it was a great recovery.”
