Petter Solberg to restart on Sunday

The Subaru World Rally Team has confirmed that Petter Solberg will be back on Sunday’s final day of Rally Mexico after his retirement on SS10.

Solberg began the second day of the rally in fourth place. Three-quarters of the way through SS10, however, his Impreza WRC2007 experienced a left-hand front drive shaft failure and the Norwegian lost over four minutes as he drove slowly through the rest of the stage.

Solberg and his co-driver Phil Mills tried in vain to fix the problem by the roadside, but the team decided to retire the car and fix it at the team’s service area in Leon. Solberg will collect 30-minutes of penalty time for the stages missed, but will still be eligible to score championship points for Subaru.

“Today was not good for us” said Solberg. “I didn’t feel comfortable with the car this morning on the loose surface, and then we had the drive problem which forced us to retire. It’s so frustrating when we had the speed early on in this event. We are now so far back, but we’ll do what we can.”