Rallye de France's first year in Alsace did not run smoothly, but as David Evans explains, it was the perfect setting for Sebastien Loeb to take an incredible seventh world title

The Wednesday night before last week's Rallye de France was a pretty miserable one at our table, in the culinary-challenged German/Lebanese restaurant next door to the grubby hotel we'd found in the suburbs of Strasbourg. The mood was not good. We were not, definitely not, in Corsica.

Earlier that same day, in an attempt to improve matters, I'd shown my hire car the 22 miles between La Petite Fosse and Belval – also known as the Pays d'Ormont stage on Saturday.

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