Loeb was born on 26 February 1974 in Haguenau, Alsace, France. He began his competitive career as a gymnast, reaching the French national level, before turning to motorsport in 1995. After winning the French Citroën Saxo Trophy in 1999, he entered the Junior World Rally Championship in 2001 and became its inaugural champion, winning five of six events. Citroën signed him to their factory WRC programme for 2002, and he took his first WRC event victory that year at the Rallye Deutschland alongside co-driver Daniel Elena.
In 2003, his first full WRC season, Loeb won three events but lost the drivers' championship to Petter Solberg by a single point. That near-miss preceded a run of dominance unlike anything rallying had previously seen.
Loeb claimed his first title in 2004 with six victories — matching a record at the time — and finished 36 points clear of second-placed Solberg. That year he became the first non-Nordic driver to win the Swedish Rally, demonstrating his ability to perform across all surfaces. The following season he extended the record for most wins in a single season to ten and won his second title by 56 points, also becoming the first driver to win every stage of a WRC rally when he swept all twelve stages of the 2005 Tour de Corse.
Citroën's parent company withdrew its works entries at the end of 2005, but Loeb continued under a Kronos-run Citroën banner in 2006 and took his third consecutive title despite missing the final four rallies after breaking his right humerus in a mountain-biking accident. Marcus Grönholm's failure to finish in Australia handed Loeb the championship by one point.
The 2007 season produced Loeb's fourth title after a close battle with Grönholm that went to the final rally in Wales. In 2008 he secured a fifth title at the Rally Japan, surpassing the previous record of four titles shared by Juha Kankkunen and Tommi Mäkinen to become rallying's first five-time world champion. He continued with a sixth title in 2009, decided again at the final event in Wales after a season-long battle with Mikko Hirvonen that was resolved by Loeb's dominance across the closing stages of the Rally GB.
The 2010 season saw Loeb secure a record seventh title at his home Rallye de France, clinching it at the final stage held in his hometown of Haguenau. He finished that year with 105 points more than runner-up Jari-Matti Latvala, the largest winning margin of his career. An eighth title followed in 2011, decided when championship rival Hirvonen suffered engine problems at the Wales Rally GB while running ahead. At that point Loeb had surpassed Michael Schumacher's seven Formula One titles to hold the record for most world championship titles in major motorsport.
In 2012 Loeb clinched a ninth and final title at the Rallye de France, also helping Citroën to their eighth manufacturers' championship. He announced his retirement from full-time WRC competition shortly before that final title, stating a desire for new challenges. German publication Auto Bild described him at that moment as "the best rally driver of all time."
Across his nine championship seasons from 2004 through 2012, Loeb won 78 WRC events in that span, accumulating records that stretched far beyond the title count alone. He holds WRC records for most event victories overall, most podium finishes, and most stage wins. His eight consecutive victories at Rallye Deutschland — from the event's introduction to the WRC calendar in 2002 through 2010 — set the record for consecutive wins at a single WRC rally. He won all but three WRC tarmac rallies in which he competed between 2005 and 2013, establishing himself as the pre-eminent asphalt specialist the series had produced.
In 2005, Loeb won six consecutive rallies to break Timo Salonen's 1985 record of four consecutive wins. He became the first driver to win more than seven WRC events in a season, eventually setting the seasonal record at ten. His nine titles also surpassed the previous rally driver championship record held by Juha Kankkunen and Carlos Sainz, both four-time champions.
Former world champion Ari Vatanen said at the time of Loeb's ninth title that his records were unlikely to be broken. That prediction proved durable: no driver matched nine titles for over a decade, and the equalling achievement by Sébastien Ogier in 2025 came over a career spanning more than fifteen years and multiple manufacturers. Loeb's nine titles were all won consecutively and exclusively with Citroën — a further dimension of the record's distinctiveness.
Loeb did not fully retire from rallying after 2012. He won the 2022 Monte Carlo Rally for M-Sport Ford alongside new co-driver Isabelle Galmiche, taking his 80th WRC victory and becoming the oldest driver to lead and win a WRC event. He also won the 2022 Extreme E Championship alongside Cristina Gutiérrez for Lewis Hamilton's Team X44, making him the only driver to win an event in four different FIA-affiliated world championships. His record in the Race of Champions, which he won five times, further reflects competitive longevity and breadth of talent across disciplines.
The nine-title record changed how the WRC was understood as a sport. It shifted attention to whether any period of comparable dominance could recur, and raised the standard against which all future championship runs would be measured. In sim racing, Loeb's career trajectory and stylistic profile — tarmac mastery, precision pacenote execution, and stage-time accumulation across wildly varied surfaces — became reference material for AI driver calibration and telemetry benchmarking in titles spanning multiple generations of rally simulation.