the 2003–2005 manufacturers' championship-winning factory Citroën team on the season's curtain-raiser in Monte Carlo, Grönholm followed up his own third place by winning for the first time that season in Sweden in February, and led his opponent, now driving a newly homologated Citroën C4 WRC, in the drivers' standings over the championship's post-Rally Finland summer break (an event also incidentally won by Grönholm, for a record-beating seventh time, to further extend his points lead). Unfortunately for the drivers' championship ambitions of both the Blue Oval concern and Grönholm, however, having announced his impending retirement from WRC competition at the end of the season, the elder Finn was to suffer an early exit on Rally Japan. Grönholm then crashed his Focus (knocking himself briefly unconscious) on the tarmac stages of the inaugural Rally Ireland and penultimate round of the year. Combined with adversary Loeb winning, this meant Grönholm would surrender his championship lead, leaving him with an almost impossible points deficit to overhaul at the season-ending Wales Rally GB. It culminated in the Frenchman, settling for a safe third on the rally to the Finn's second, triumphing in the second long points duel between the pair in consecutive years. Ford, however, aided by supporting teammate Hirvonen's continued superiority on loose-surface events over his Citroën counterpart Daniel Sordo, sealed a successful defence of the Constructors' Championship. Meanwhile, Hirvonen, for his part, in addition to ending the season in style by topping the timesheets after the three days' competition in Wales, had also earlier taken his second and third career world rally victories in Norway and Japan. At the half way stage of the 2007 World Rally Championship, a joint venture between BP-Ford and the Abu Dhabi Tourism Board was announced to bring a third official Ford Focus RS World Rally Car to the team's campaign. Khalid AlQassimi and co-driver Nicky Beech contested the Neste Oil Rally Finland, ADAC Rallye Deutschland, Rally RACC Catalunya-Costa Daurada and Rally Ireland. For their work in the 2007 season, BP Ford and M-Sport received the Rally Business of the Year Award from the Motorsport Industry Association. 2008 season Mikko Hirvonen and co-driver Jarmo Lehtinen resumed the implicit role within the team of the Cumbria outfit's leading crew for the 2008 season, after Marcus Grönholm and co-driver Timo Rautiainen elected to retire following the 2007 season, with the more experienced Finn later to be found dabbling for Ford