Solberg’s starting point in Chile was highly favourable. With a victory, he would become the WRC2 champion. Such a situation could get on the nerves of a more faint-hearted driver, but Solberg is made of different stuff.
The Swede has taken the situation calmly and leads his class by more than half a minute over Nikolay Gryazin ahead of the final day.
Solberg has once again done consistently good work in Chile. Now, only the final seal is missing.
“I just want to be clean and, you know, do my thing—nice and steady—and try to take it stage by stage. It’s such a tricky weekend with the tyres, the first time here with tyre management and the weather. And we don’t have any soft tyres when it’s raining. So there are a lot of things that are new, you know, so I’d rather play it a bit safe and push when I can,” Solberg said on Saturday evening.
Although the main goal of the season, the WRC2 championship, is within reach, Solberg predicted no trouble sleeping.
“I will sleep beautifully in the arms of my fiancée,” he smiled.
According to Solberg, the final day of Rally Chile is just like a normal day at the office.
“I think that’s the best way to do it, you know—treat it like a normal day. Of course, always margin. But I’ve had margin all week, so it’s just about treating it like a normal day, like this weekend, and hoping for the best,” Solberg noted.
From a Finnish perspective, however, the day brought sad news. The rally of Emil Lindholm and his co-driver Reeta Hämäläinen, competing in a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, ended in retirement on Saturday evening due to a radiator failure. Before retiring, the pair were in fourth place in their class.
“A disappointing thing. That podium fight slipped away from us. In the afternoon, we managed to keep up with the pace much better than on the morning stages,” Lindholm explained.
“At the end of the penultimate stage of the day, the radiator started leaking. We had a tight, short road section to the last stage of the day, and we only had time to patch the radiator with chemical metal, which we hoped would be enough to keep the water inside,” he continued.
In the end, retirement was the only option. However, the crew plan to continue the rally today, Sunday.
“In the end, we had to stop and retire from the rally to avoid damaging the engine of our car. In service, the radiator was replaced with a new one, and today we continue. Ahead of us are still some fine, but rather slow, roads,” Lindholm summed up.
On Sunday, four more stages will be driven in Rally Chile.
