WRC
Solberg strikes first on Rally Sweden opener
Oliver Solberg delivered for the home fans on Thursday night, charging to the Rally Sweden lead after a slippery curtain-raiser on the ice-packed Umeå super special.
The championship leader stopped the clocks at 5min 53.1sec on the 10.23km blast to head a commanding early 1-2-3-4 for Toyota Gazoo Racing. Elfyn Evans was closest, 3.8sec adrift, with Takamoto Katsuta and Sami Pajari completing the quartet.
Despite the ideal start, Solberg admitted the stage was far from straightforward.
“The car was going left and right and going everywhere. There was nothing to follow,” he said. “It was really tricky. First time with the car on this stage, it was not easy.”
Behind the Toyotas, Hyundai Motorsport led the chase. Thierry Neuville ended the opener fifth, 6.7sec off the benchmark after erring on the side of caution under braking.
“I’m braking super, super early all the time,” he admitted. “I just don’t know if the car will stop or not.”
Adrien Fourmaux and Esapekka Lappi followed in sixth and seventh respectively, both wrestling with visibility in the hanging snow dust but staying within touch of the podium fight.
© WRC
At M-Sport Ford, it was a more dramatic opener. Josh McErlean and Mārtiņš Sesks brought their Puma Rally1 cars home safely inside the top 10 ahead of Lorenzo Bertelli, but Jon Armstrong lost around 45sec after being swallowed by a snowbank on a square right.
“I was really lucky not to get stuck,” he said. “It was a difficult stage to read the grip… I just missed my braking point.”
The rally ventures out into the forests of Västerbotten on Friday where crews face seven stages totalling more than 120 kilometres.
