Solberg: I'm going to drive my own rally

Subaru’s team leader Petter Solberg says his strategy for the Swedish Rally is to stay out of trouble and ignore the competition around him.

Solberg, who was fifth on the season opener in Monte Carlo, won the Swedish round in 2005 and counts it as one of his favourites. This will be Petter’s tenth attempt at the rally and after years of driving cars on the frozen roads of his home country of Norway, he is one of the most experienced winter drivers in the series.

“It’s the first snow rally this year and I’m looking forward to it,” said Solberg. “We need to drive very differently here, so it’s about who can adapt. We’ve won here before but it’s so, so tricky you never know what can happen. We’ll go there and drive our own rally, push as hard as we can, and see what happens. We can’t do any more than that, and I hope we can have another good finish. It’s about being fast but not making any mistakes.”

This year’s Swedish Rally is the closest thing Solberg will get to a home event, but it’s special in other ways too: In 1998 he made his WRC debut there driving a Toyota Celica GT-4. He finished 26th, while his future wife, Pernilla Walfridsson, was 28th.