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In Mladá Boleslav, 3 July, 2011 – One week after his record-breaking seventh victory at the Ypres Rally in Belgium, the current IRC leader Freddy Loix won Rally Bohemia, a Czech Republic Championship event where Loix appeared for the first time in his career. After Juho Hänninen's victories in the previous two years, ŠKODA Motorsport are celebrating a "hat-trick" in a rally that regularly takes place in the surroundings of the brand's headquarters.

The event kicked off on Friday with a 2.5-km-long super special stage that saw an exciting battle among Loix, Kresta and Valoušek, but the core of the event programme was scheduled to start on Saturday, with nine stages on the agenda. Roman Kresta in a private Fabia Super 2000 kept setting the pace all day long to come first at the end of Day 1, just 18 seconds ahead of Freddy Loix. On Sunday the drivers had to cope with several heavy rainfalls and rain pouring down all day. Still before Sunday's Stage 1, leader Roman Kresta withdrew from the rally due to a wiring defect. As a result, Freddy Loix moved up to the lead and stayed there throughout the remaining six stages to beat second-place Valoušek in a Peugeot by 35 seconds and third-place Arazim in a Mitsubishi by four minutes, thus converting his debut at Rally Bohemia into a victory and becoming the fifth Belgian to win this event.

Head of ŠKODA Motorsport Michal Hrabánek was very happy after the rally: "Congratulations to Freddy and Fréderic on another victory with a Fabia Super 2000! The guys have had a hard but very successful week. We are always expected to win at home, so we are really happy about this result. I hope that the fans enjoyed the event, too, despite all the bad weather. Our team is now going to start preparing for the next IRC event in the Azores where we are planning to use both our crews, i.e. Kopecký & Starý and Hänninen & Markkula. Petr Starý is gradually recovering from his injury, and we believe that he will be prepared to appear on the start line".

Having achieved another victory within just one week, Freddy Loix was thrilled to bits: "From the driver's point of view, Rally Bohemia was a lovely but difficult rally, actually way more difficult than that in Ypres. We couldn't believe our eyes in the first few stages how fast we were dashing through all those little villages and narrow passes between trees, it was a real adrenaline thing and I enjoyed that a great deal. The weather on Sunday was incredibly nasty, which made things very difficult, but we knew that to win we had to go fast but play it cool and safe at the same time".

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