Norwegian superstar Petter Solberg celebrated victory at the maiden World RX of Barcelona at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya today (Sunday).
Petter’s no stranger to winning, but it’s been a pretty lean summer in terms of time on the top step for the two-time FIA World Champion. Which is why he was so pleased to land a first victory since World RX of Great Britain at Lydden Hill in May. That and the fact he didn’t let his son Oliver down…
Solberg, who is 35 points clear at the top of the World RX table with three rounds remaining this season, said: “We have fought hard for this win the whole weekend. We’ve run a lot of different set-ups on the car – we had to really work at it to catch Peugeot. All the time, the 208 was taking tenths of seconds, but eventually the brilliant PSRX engineers worked it out.
“My son won a crosskart race in Sweden today; I got the message by telephone and he was joking and being quite confident and cocky in telling me I couldn’t let the family down – I actually really felt the pressure from that!
“In the end, I could call him back and be quite cocky back with him. I liked that!
“Everything was going quite well from the start, but in the third heat, I touched the wall on the left side – there was loads of dust in the car and I really couldn’t see so well. We struggled a lot to get it all back together for the fourth heat, but when we did, I needed to deliver a top result to defend a spot in the semi-finals.
“I had a bad start in the semi, so I was happy with second place in the end. We did some more set-up changes on car before final and the result came instantly.
“In the final, I had a proper start. I came side by side with [Johan] Kristoffersson into the first corner. Then I did my smart move with a break and a turn on the inside of Kristoffersson and Hansen.
“It was very slippery on the gravel; I did a mistake into the first gravel section but, fortunately for me, so did the others. After that, I drove really smart and pulled away in a controlled drive from the front.
“To win again was so important to me and my whole team. At the last race, we were back on the podium again after a tough summer, but when I was in France I was looking at the top step thinking: “Hmm, it’s been too long since I stood there…”
“This weekend, we put that right. And we did it at the right time, we did it at a race where we had a lot of sponsors with us – I hope they all enjoyed it as much as I did.”
Result:
1 Petter Solberg 4m51.051s
2 Johan Kristoffersson 4m53.724s
3 Timmy Hansen 4m53.909s
4 Davey Jeanney 4m56.795s
5 Tanner Foust 4m57.010s
6 Robin Larsson N/A
Drivers’ championship positions:
1 Petter Solberg 243pts
2 Timmy Hansen 208pts
3 Johan Kristoffersson 182pts
4 Davy Jeanney 166pts
5 Andreas Bakkerud 163pts
6 Mattias Ekström 155pts
Teams’ championship positions:
1 Peugeot-Hansen 374pts
2 Ford Olsbergs MSE 297pts
3 SDRX 268pts
Next time out World RX of Turkey (October 2/4)
SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO READ THE FULL STORY
