MOTOR SPORT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP RALLY IRELAND:THERE'S A gag doing the rounds which attempts to encapsulate the times we live in. "What's the definition of confidence?" it runs. "A banker ironing his shirts on a Sunday night."

In Enniskillen last night the motorsport equivalent of that kind of blind faith ran, under floodlights, from the town’s castle to the Buttermarket, the series’ remaining major stars indulging in a ceremonial display of confidence that gave freezing locals a chance to both marvel at the scale of the operation the World Rally Championship still represents and also to wonder at the fact a championship that in the past eight weeks has seen two of its major participants, Subaru and Suzuki, bow out due to the economic downturn is here at all.

But despite the creaking economics of the theatre WRC plays in, the show must go on and while there have been mutterings that the second running of Rally Ireland after 2007’s inaugural event would be diluted by the absence of some major teams and competitors, last night’s ceremonial start in Enniskillen showed that teams may come and go but the core script still holds together. Start with terrible roads, mix in some bad weather, add a cast of some of the finest drivers on the planet and the story is still compelling.

The central plot remains the same too: can anyone beat Sebastien Loeb, the Citroen driver who last year racked up his fifth title on the bounce?

Loeb himself has typically adopted the role of beneficent champion, saying this year’s championship will be a sharply contested affair. That, though, is being charitable and taking heart from Loeb’s words looks as blindly optimistic as the banker in the joke. Of those busy ironing their shirts, the likeliest are the BP Ford drivers Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

Last season, Hirvonen managed to keep the title fight alive until the penultimate round before Loeb triumphed.

“I definitely feel more confident this season,” said the Finn, who yesterday finished the morning 2.87km shakedown near Lisduff fastest, four tenths ahead of the five-time champion. “I think I learned from last year what I need to do if I want to beat Sebastien. All I need to do is just be a bit more crazy – and win more!”

For Hirvonen’s Ford team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala, who took his first WRC podium here in 2007, this morning’s first stages in Leitrim and Cavan are a chance to continue the good form the young Finn showed at the end of 2008, a campaign which had seen him take his first win, in Sweden, but also saw a series of spectacular crashes, with three in as many events in August alone.

The 23-year-old fought back with second-place finishes in the final two rounds to mark himself out as a potential challenger to Loeb’s hegemony.

Perhaps the most interesting attempt at loosening Loeb’s stranglehold will come, however, from within his own camp.

This season Loeb’s Citroen team has launched a “junior” team to contest a number of events and among the fledgling team’s drivers is 25-year-old Frenchman Sebastien Ogier, a driver mentored through his early career by Loeb himself.

Ogier, who last season became the first Junior WRC driver to take a senior series point when he finished eighth in Mexico, comes to Ireland less than a week after unexpectedly triumphing in the first round of WRC rival series, the Intercontinental Rally Championship, which took place on the Monte Carlo roads abandoned by WRC. The student will now be targeting his mentor’s crown, if not immediately then certainly in the future.

In yesterday’s shakedown, however, the rookie could only manage the 11th fastest time, with Citroen junior team-mate Chris Atkinson considerably quicker, the Australian finishing third. Gareth McHale was quickest of the Irish with a time of 1:44.3.

The rival all will have to contend with, however, is the weather. Heavy rain and strong winds are forecast for today’s opening stages in Leitrim and Cavan, although the rain is expected to ease through the weekend.

While the championship struggles through its own economic storm, it seems that at least real world climatic conditions could provide the troubled series with the perfect opener to this season’s campaign and the very faint possibility of an upset.