Sebastien Loeb is heading back to where it all began. The nine-time World Rally champion will line up this weekend at the Rallye Vosges-Grand Est, the fourth round of the French Tarmac Rally Championship, in his first outing in top-level World Rally Championship machinery since 2022.
The 52-year-old has spent recent months in the dust of the World Rally-Raid Championship, where he leads the standings for Dacia after three of five rounds. The Vosges event is a deliberate step away from the dunes and back onto sealed roads.
"Back on asphalt," Loeb wrote on social media. "Laurene and I are eager to start the Rallye Vosges Grand Est and get back to racing in the French Rally Championship."
He and co-driver Laurene Godey will share a 2017-specification Ford Fiesta WRC built by M-Sport, the British squad with which Loeb contested his last stage-rally programme. According to AutoHebdo, he will become the first driver to enter a WRC car of that era as a privateer in the French championship.
The last time Loeb drove machinery of this kind was a four-event cameo with M-Sport Ford in 2022, a run that included an astonishing victory at the Monte Carlo Rally, the 80th win of his WRC career and a reminder that the speed had not deserted him. He has not started a round of the world championship since the Acropolis Rally that year.
Rallye Vosges-Grand Est runs over 12 asphalt stages totalling 199.6km, with the action spread across Saturday and Sunday. Its mix of fast, flowing tarmac is exactly the kind of surface on which Loeb built much of his reputation, and a privateer WRC entry of this pedigree is a rarity at French national level.
He will not be the only familiar name on the entry list. Julien Ingrassia, the eight-time world champion co-driver who guided Sebastien Ogier to all of his titles, is also entered, this time behind the wheel rather than in the left-hand seat, driving an Alpine A290 Rally in the marque's one-make trophy.
For Loeb, the appearance is a one-off rather than the start of a comeback; his main 2026 focus remains the rally-raid title fight with Dacia. But for the French fans lining the Vosges stages, the chance to see a WRC Fiesta in the hands of the sport's most decorated driver is reason enough to turn out.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/loeb-returns-to-stage-rallying-in-a-wrc-fiesta-this-weekend). Visit for full coverage.*