Østberg and Barth took part in Rally di Roma Capitale last July, but their race came to a grim end on the ninth special stage.
Their Citroën C3 Rally2 car veered off the road and crashed directly into a tree in a long left-hand corner. The car hit the tree on the co-driver’s side, but fortunately both were able to exit the vehicle under their own power. Østberg escaped the crash with no major injuries, but his Swedish co-driver Patrik Barth was not as lucky.
Barth sustained serious injuries in the accident and eventually decided that enough was enough. He stepped away from the sport. When Østberg lines up this coming weekend for Rally Sierra Morena, it will be Torstein Eriksen reading the pace notes in place of Barth.
The story continues after the picture.
It wasn’t a matter of Østberg not wanting to continue working with Barth, but it simply was no longer possible. Doctors gave Barth a clear message: he would have to stop competing if he wanted to avoid permanent injury.
“The crash itself last year… I mean it was not good, but it wasn’t like 100% that crash that ended it,” Barth told DirtFish.
“My past is filled with injuries, and quite bad ones, and after the crash last year it’s like I now have to pay the price for the life I had before I started with rallying,” Barth continued.
Before turning to rallying, Barth competed in motocross, but suffered a very serious accident in that sport as well. At the time, he was fighting for his life in intensive care, and after leaving hospital, he spent as long as a year and a half in a wheelchair.
Barth has now had to accept, twice, that his dreams would not come true. That would be tough for anyone.
“I wanted to be a world champion in motocross, but ended up in a wheelchair instead. Then rallying came up, and I wanted to be a world champion in rally as well as a co-driver. Unfortunately I won’t manage it,” Barth said.
Despite it all, Barth has come to terms with everything. What helped was realising that there are more important things in life than competing in motorsport.
“You have to just take decisions and live after those decisions, and you can’t bury yourself just because of that,” he said.
“Because when I compete, I want to win, and if we should win, I need to be 100%. And now that I have two kids back home and everything, you need to also think about the family. And I don’t want my kids to be without their father,” Barth reminded us of the most important things in life.
