Sebastian Loeb claimed his sixth straight world rally championship success on Sunday in Wales. Unlike his previous championship successes, the Citroen driver was forced to fight until the bitter end against rival Mikko Hirvonen.

“It was the hardest one, Mikko has done an incredible season,” Loeb explained. “We had to fight until the last stage, so that's something I never had before. In every championship I won, it was finished a bit before the end or sometimes in the last rally we didn't have to win. We had to win, so the pressure was really really high until the last stage. The only thing we had to do was push on the limit from the first to the nearly last stage because Mikko was really close, he was pushing very hard. That was the key.

“This season we had some high and some low points - we started with five victories and everybody was thinking we would win the Championship and then we had a period where it was much more difficult,” he continued. “We had some troubles and made some mistakes and Mikko won a lot of rallies and took a lot of points.

Loeb had been hoping that he could compete with Toro Rosso Ferrari in the Abu Dhabi F1 season finale this coming weekend. He was however denied a superlicence to make his grand prix debut and is now focussed on a short break before preparations for 2010 begin.

“Have some holiday, that's the first thing, and just have some good times and start the testing for next year like every time in the winter,” he said when asked about his schedule for the next 12 weeks. “But it was a really exciting weekend with a lot of pressure and stress. To win this title in this situation is an incredible feeling,” he concluded.