Saturday drama stalls Solberg’s WRC2 title hopes

Driving a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 prepared by Toksport, Solberg and co-driver Elliott Edmondson arrived in Chile knowing that victory was the only guaranteed way to secure the WRC2 crown this weekend. After a strong morning, they passed Citroën rivals Nikolay Gryazin and Yohan Rossel to seize the lead.

But disaster struck on the penultimate test when tyre damage forced Solberg to stop and change a wheel. The delay cost him approximately 1min 40s, dropping him to fourth place and leaving him trailing Gryazin – who reclaimed the lead – by a minute overnight.

Solberg now faces an uphill battle to recover on Sunday. Should he fail to reclaim the top spot, the WRC2 title will likely be decided on the season finale at FORUM8 Rally Japan, which is expected to be title challenger Sami Pajari’s last outing of the year.

Reflecting on the day’s misfortune after setting the fastest time by 10.5sec on the final stage, a frustrated Solberg said: “This was the first time I’ve ‘tried’ all weekend, and I hit every rock possible but got no punctures. Earlier, I don’t know what happened, but I picked up a slow puncture in the stage. Why now?”

Meanwhile, Gryazin not only leads WRC2 overall but also remains on course to keep the WRC2 Challenger championship alive, topping that class by more than two minutes over Kajetan Kajetanowicz. In the overall WRC2 standings, second place went to Britain’s Gus Greensmith who trailed Gryazin by 16.8sec, with Rossel a further 1.6sec adrift in third.

Behind Solberg, Kajetanowicz held fifth in his Škoda while Paraguayan driver Fau Zaldivar managed to bring his similar car home in sixth despite battling engine issues throughout the day.