The world championship starts here today with Peugeot gambling - fittingly, for the rally of Monte Carlo and its famous casino - on a new driver whose only experience of competition at this exalted level came on mountain bikes. But Nicolas Vouilloz, who won his pedal-powered sport's downhill world title 10 years in a row before switching to rallying last year, has become impossible for the team to ignore.
Because knowledge of bad roads and poor conditions is crucial in rallying, it is one sport which has traditionally valued experience more than the snap of youth. But Vouilloz, a 27-year-old from Nice, brings neither to Peugeot this morning when the three-day event starts near Gap in the high Alps, a testing overture of six special stages which climaxes in the first visit to Monte Carlo itself tonight.
Peugeot's front-line drivers Marcus Gronholm and Freddy Loix will be given the new car to tackle the mountains, a heavily modified 307 Coupe Cabriolet, while Vouilloz and his B-team colleague Miguel Campos use a mildly detuned version of last year's world championship 206.
It will still be the equivalent of a formula one performer for the newcomer, who won Peu geot's 206 championship in France at a canter last year and earned a two-year contract to drive the world championship 206. Vouilloz, on only his 13th rally, admits it is a big task.
"My aim is to be at the finish - that's the only pressure - but that's difficult enough at Monte Carlo," he said. "Peugeot want me to cover as many kilometres as possible this year."
Come Sunday, though, Sébastien Loeb is fancied to repeat last year's triumph for Citroën.
