Citroen Junior Team

Name:	Citroen Junior Team
Based:	Versailles, France
Established:	2009
Team principal:	Olivier Quesnel
Current car:	Citroen C4 WRC
Manufacturers' titles:	None
Current drivers:	Conrad Rautenbach, Evgeny Novikov, Sebastien Ogier, Chris Atkinson
Manufacturer WRC wins:	None
Team website:	www.citroen.com/CWW/en-US/SPORT/
Why support them?	They're a total unknown. Be an early adopter. Young drivers in top level rally cars - it's bound to be lively. This is the place to find the next Sebastien Loeb Ex Subaru fans can still follow their man Atkinson

At the end of 2008 Citroen announced that it would take on Ford's Stobart and Munchi's teams head-on by running its own semi-works team in the 2009 World Rally Championship.

Registered for the Manufacturer Team category, the Citroen Junior Team will run up to four Citroen C4 WRCs on each event - meaning as many as six works supported C4s on some rallies.

Youth is the key word at this team. Compared to the factory squad, Citroen Junior is focussed on drivers at the start of their careers - with an average age of just 22.

Youngsters Conrad Rautenbach, Evgeny Novikov and Sebastien Ogier will form the mainstay of the line-up, while the more experienced Subaru refugee Chris Atkinson will tackle at least Rally Ireland.

Zimbabwean Rautenbach will contest every round of the series and will be joined on at least eight of those 12 by the Russian Evgeny Novikov. The programme of the Junior World Champion Sebastien Ogier currently includes six events. At this stage Australia's Chris Atkinson is only confirmed for Rally Ireland, but the indications are he will do more events later in the year.

The set-up of the operation will be the same as that which ran Aava and Rautenbach in 2008. On events, the cars will be run by Citroen Sport Technologies but will share a lot of Citroen Sport's facilities.