In 2007, Nicolás Voiloz lost to his teammate Enrique García Ojeda in the IRC tournament, but a year later he was able to give such stable performances that he won the tournament before the end of the season.
After the 2007 IRC season, a balanced performance led to the championship title in 2008 as well, and after Enrique Garcia Ojeda’s pole position, Peugeot rider Nicolas Vueloz and co-driver Nicolas Klinger were able to finish on top again.
In addition, the French rider’s IRC season 15 years ago was eerily similar to Hayden Paddon’s ERC season this year, despite the fact that the New Zealand rider is only advancing towards the championship title.
Paddon managed to win just one of ERC’s five races this year, the season opener, and has since finished second in a row, leading the championship by 34 points.
Nicolas Vueloz 15 years ago with a 207 S2000 for the Peugeot Bel-Lux team, although he also managed to win one race, he was second in all the other races considered at the end of the year, so he had already won the championship in Switzerland before Season finale at Rally China in front of Freddy Lewis and 2006 champion Giandomenico Basso.
The IRC season that year consisted of 10 races, however, only the eight best results counted towards the end of the year, so the French driver’s third place in the Rally of Portugal and the Russian’s fifth place were minus.
“It’s a great feeling to finally win such a serious championship,” Voiloz said after a second place at the Rally du Vallee in Switzerland, with which he took first place at the end of the year. “We competed constantly all year and tried to avoid even the smallest mistakes. All the races were at a high level. Very with very fast opponents.For this reason, the league title is very valuable to us.The IRC Championship was a very strong series this year and I think it will only get stronger in the future.When I lost the championship last year, I decided to do everything to win it this year. Kronos Racing, the company behind the Peugeot Bel-Lux cars, delivered a very good car in every race, so I owe a big thank you to the whole team.”
Nicolas Vouilloz, who is 47 this year, won the IRC title only in 2008, and the French driver completed his last full season in his career in 2009, but after that he could only get fourth place in IRC, and later only one. He was able to start in one race, and made his last start of 2018.
