Greensmith throws support behind Solberg’s WRC2 bid

Solberg was on course to win last week’s Rally Chile Bio Bío, a result that would have also secured him the WRC2 title, before a tyre deflation dropped the Swede to fourth place.

Despite still leading the championship, Solberg has now completed the maximum seven rounds permitted, while his closest rivals Sami Pajari and Yohan Rossel both have scoring rounds in hand.

Although Greensmith, who drives a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 similar to Solberg’s, is no longer in contention for the title himself, he still has one more rally start available to score points. The Briton confirmed his plans to contest the season-ending FORUM8 Rally Japan, where he aims to finish ahead of Pajari and bolster Solberg’s title chances. Rossel, who pilots a Citroën C3 Rally2, will conclude his campaign at Central European Rally later this month (17 – 20 October).

“I’ll go to Japan and do the best I can for Oliver to help him try and secure the title,” said Greensmith. “I’ll be scoring points there, so I’ll do everything I can to take points away from Sami. I’ll do my best to help [Oliver] there, but we’ll see.”

Greensmith’s third-place finish in Chile marked his second-best result of a challenging season so far. He narrowly missed out on the runner-up spot, finishing just 3.4sec behind Nikolay Gryazin following a half spin on the Wolf Power Stage.

“We were a good chunk ahead of Nikolay on the splits and we would have overtaken him, but obviously I didn’t know that,” he explained. “I was pushing flat-out and then on probably the third or fourth last corner, you can go really inside and cut through where the junction is. For some reason it tried to roll, so I had to turn out and obviously try to keep it on the road and we had a half spin.”

Greensmith’s 2024 WRC2 season so far:
Safari Rally Kenya – 1st
Vodafone Rally de Portugal – DNF
ORLEN 80th Rally Poland – 9th
Secto Rally Finland – DNF
EKO Acropolis Rally Greece – DNF
Rally Chile Bio Bío – 3rd