The Citroen Junior Team rounded off its debut season in the World Rally Championship

With a double points haul on the Rally of Great Britain, and every intention of building on its 2009 successes next year. The factory-supported squad ran four cars in Wales, the last round of the Championship, for Sebastien Ogier, Petter Solberg, Conrad Rautenbach and J-WRC regular Aaron Burkart. Evgeny Novikov was to drive a fifth C4 World Rally Car, but withdrew a week before the event.

Solberg and co-driver Phil Mills were the Junior team stars in Wales, finishing fourth overall after a thrilling last day fight for third with factory team driver Dani Sordo. Rautenbach and co-driver Daniel Barritt were the team’s other scorers, finishing eighth to take the final point.

The Welsh result could have been a lot better for the team, however, had star driver Sebastien Ogier not retired from fifth place three stages from the end after swerving to avoid rocks in the road and rolling his car.

Burkart, meanwhile, was set to finish ninth before losing four minutes with an off road excursion of his own in the event’s closing kilometres. The German, entered by the CitroĂ«n Junior Team as a reward for his second place in the 2008 Junior World Rally Championship, ended up 13th on his first event at the wheel of a World Rally Car.

At the end of a season which has seen Sebastien Ogier, Conrad Rautenbach, Evgeny Novikov, Petter Solberg, Chris Atkinson and Aaron Burkart drive the Citroen Junior Team C4 WRCs, team manager Benoit Nogier was positive about what had been achieved.

“We’ve got four cars to the finish in Wales,” he said. “Only Sebastien Ogier was missing, but we cannot hold that against him after everything he has achieved this season. What happened was neither a driving error nor a mistake with the notes: just a trap that is easy to fall into in these tricky conditions. Sebastien and Julien have once more shown us what they are capable of and we would like to congratulate them on their successful season.

“We’re very proud of Conrad Rautenbach’s rally. He’s made a lot of progress over the last couple of years and he’s scored a point on one of the most difficult events of the season. Aaron Burkart successfully got to the finish of his first event in a WRC car. By accumulating as much experience as possible, he has achieved his objective.

“The icing on the cake for the CitroĂ«n Junior Team was the presence of Petter Solberg in Britain,” he continued. “He showed his talent by fighting for a podium all the way to the finish. We would like to continue this adventure following the solid foundations that we have built this year. We’d like to continue working with Sebastien and other drivers, so it’s now down to us to put everything into place so that we can carry on.

source: wrc.com