The star they called Hollywood

There he was, trying not to get his nice gold boots dirty in a very wet, very Welsh field, when a near delirious Norwegian landed in his arms. And stayed there.

That was one very special Sunday for Subaru. Even more so for Petter Solberg. The 28-year-old from Spydeberg was world rally champion.

His life had already evolved quite considerably from racing a Volkswagen Beetle around a field. But now everything was about to go a bit bananas.

Prior to winning the 2003 championship, Solberg was already one of the most popular figures in the history of the sport. Standing on top of the world, that recognition, appreciation and appeal only went one way: stratospheric.

Solberg’s driving won him the first of three FIA world titles (a pair of FIA World Rallycross crowns would follow), but it was his own appreciation of the sport and the people around the sport that marked him out as one of the most charismatic and valued drivers.

“We all know about the driving,” said Solberg, “but as well as this being the best sport in the world, it’s a show and you have to put time in to make that show.”

Fittingly, Solberg became known as ‘Hollywood’ during his time at the top of the WRC. He’s keen not to be misunderstood on the show aspect of what he did and what he does.

“You have to be yourself,” he said. “If you’re not being yourself then you’re not being honest and people will see through that and nobody can respect that.

“I love meeting people, I love seeing the fans and that’s something which has never changed. Sometimes I would be having a tough event, something might have gone wrong, maybe I crashed a little bit or we took a problem on the car.

“That’s not the fan’s fault – they have still been standing there for a long time, maybe in the rain or the snow or the freezing cold or in the hot weather in Greece. Forget your day, you have to make time for them. They are the ones who make our sport special.”

It might sound clichéd, but that’s the way Solberg lived his career. And it’s the reason he’s still mobbed wherever he goes around the sport today. The public, fan-facing Solberg is as genuine as it ever was. It’ll never change.

And neither will the inner steel which helped him achieve dream after dream.

Soon after opening his eyes for the first time, Petter – like younger brother Henning – was all about cars. Their parents – Tove and Terje – were successful autocross competitors in their own right. That meant there was usually a Beetle or two about the place and such cars provided the perfect playground for the Solberg youth.

Driving from the age of 10, Petter was predictably proficient behind the wheel way before he was permitted to take his driving test. He passed his test aged 18 years and two days. And he was straight into autocross. Straight into racing. Third on his debut, you’d have thought most folk would have been happy with a podium out of the box.

“Why?” he questioned. “If I don’t like to be second, why would I like to be third. First is the only place.”

In his formative years, he progressed through the ranks of Norwegian national rallycross and hillclimbs before winning both titles in 1995. A year later he made the switch to rallying. A year later and he graduated to a Group A Toyota Celica GT-Four. This was when things really started to move.

Through 1998, Solberg was winning pretty much everything he started at home in Norway, but it was an outing at Rally Lebanon that changed everything. He finished second to Middle East expert Mohammed Ben Sulayem on a notoriously tricky asphalt event.

That’s when people started to take notice. That’s when Solberg addressed a package to Mr M. Wilson, M-Sport, Cumbria, England.

Determined to make an impression on the service park, Solberg had made a highlights video of his driving and sent it to Ford team principal Wilson, who watched it and was impressed.

At the start of October 1998, Solberg was invited to the UK to take part in a young driver test. It went well. On October 11, the telephone rang and Wilson offered the 23-year-old a three-year deal.

Solberg was in. He’d achieved the first part of his plan: he was on the right side of the wall.

But merely being in the WRC was never going to be enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted to know everything. As a junior team-mate to Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae, Solberg couldn’t believe his luck. He was going to tests with two legends of the sport and looking to learn some of their tricks of the trade.

“They were both really good,” said Solberg, “but Colin was fantastic. I was able to ride with him at a test sometimes. That was so special. But I would come away wondering how he did what he did.

“Fortunately, sometimes I was allowed to go to the restaurant with them after the test. Honestly, I never stopped asking questions. I never stopped talking.

“I remember Colin getting quite cross sometimes and telling me he wouldn’t tell me anything if I kept asking questions. I would be quiet. But only for a couple of minutes. I had so many questions and I wanted to know so much stuff.”

Solberg’s big break with the team came on the 1999 Safari Rally, when he was parachuted into the team in place of the injured Thomas Rådstrom.

“I remember the call,” said Solberg. “I was getting ready to go and do the Finnskog Rally in an Escort at home. Suddenly I was going to Kenya to drive a Focus. My co-driver for that event was Fred Gallagher, somebody who had great experience and had won the Safari before.

“When we came from shakedown, he told me we wouldn’t finish the first day if I drove like I’d just driven. Africa was different. It needed respect and Fred really helped me understand that.”

Solberg finished fifth. His rally career was up and running.

Midway through the 2000 season came what remains one of the biggest shocks of the World Rally Car era. Solberg left Ford and signed for Subaru in the middle of the season.

“It was a really tough decision,” said Solberg, taking a suitably sombre tone. “You know me. You know I’m not the kind of guy who does this kind of thing, but it was a decision which had to be made.”

That meant a move from Ford’s WRC base at M-Sport in England’s north-west to Subaru’s WRC HQ in the middle of the country at Prodrive. Solberg immediately felt at home in a team made famous by McRae. And the team immediately wrapped its arms around him.

Initially Solberg ran as team-mate to Richard Burns and Markko Märtin, but when they departed for Peugeot and Ford respectively, Petter became synonymous with Subaru and remains something of a legend to Japanese rally fans of all ages to this day.

“The cars at that time, around 2003 and 2004,” he said, thinking and searching for the superlatives to describe an early-ear World Rally Car, “they were just fantastic. The Subarus at that time were fully active – front, centre and rear differentials – and we had active suspension, the whole thing. When you took the launch off the start line, the car moved into second gear on its own – that was such cool technology.

“The car I used to win the championship and the following year, they were the cars for me. I don’t forget these.”

He certainly wouldn’t forget Rally GB in 2002. His first win in the WRC.

“You don’t forget that one,” said Solberg. “A lot of people ask, which is the rally I remember the most and this one has to be right up there. You work so hard for so long and then you achieve this thing – it’s incredible.”

Twelve months on and the biggest dream of all came true when Solberg took the title. Arriving at the end of the final stage in Wales, Petter and co-driver Phil Mills were on top of the world.

“I remember Tommi was there,” said Solberg. “It was his last rally, he was retiring. I jumped into his arms – I was so happy and so grateful to him. Tommi had been incredible for me, he helped me all the time. He wasn’t ever thinking about himself, he was just telling me all of the time how to do things.”

Solberg’s success came at the cost of a maiden Sébastien Loeb title. The Citroën driver was beaten by a single point. Solberg remains the only person ever to beat the Frenchman across a complete season.

Loeb would, however, get his own back the following year. And the year after…

Solberg’s fame and following grew and grew through the Subaru years and he became the natural successor to McRae for iconic Impreza imagery.

All of that changed, of course, when Subaru withdrew from the WRC at the end of 2008. The decision from Japan came so late, the other seats were taken and, out of nowhere, just five years on from winning his first world title, Solberg was left high, dry and without wheels for 2009.

“What could I do?” he said. “I could go to the corner and sit and cry or I could get on the telephone and make things happen.”

He got on the phone. And stayed there. Christmas in 2008 was pretty much cancelled in the Solberg household as he and wife Pernilla went through their contacts books and talked to everybody about plans for the following season.

A Citroën Xsara WRC was sourced and the Petter Solberg World Rally Team was born. But not in time for the season-opening Rallye Monte-Carlo.

“That was a tough time for me,” said Petter. “I had been working so hard since we got the news about Subaru – you should have seen the bill for the telephone through December: it was thousands! And then we missed Monte. To stand there and watch the event start without us was hard.

“But actually, after that moment the rest of the event wasn’t so bad because we were so busy with getting everything else ready for the second round of the championship.”

The first competitive outing for Solberg’s own team couldn’t have been better planned – it was Rally Norway. His home event ahead of a huge and hugely appreciative crowd. First stage was a crowd pleaser in Oslo. Fastest? You guessed it… Petter Solberg. The fans went wild.

“That was special,” he said. “And that was a special car. I still have this one. Sometimes I go out and take the Xsara for a drive – it’s always a car that makes you smile.”

Sixth place first time out, Team Solberg celebrated its first podium on just its second event together in Cyprus.

For 2010 Chris Patterson replaced Mills in the co-driver’s seat, a more contemporary C4 WRC was sourced from Versailles and eight podiums powered him to third in the championship, just two points behind Jari-Matti Latvala in second.

After another season of running his own team in 2011 (using a DS 3 WRC), it was time to go back to where it all started. Solberg returned to M-Sport for 2012. Again, there were podiums aplenty, but a win just eluded him.

Most frustratingly in Greece, where he trailed Loeb by just 10sec going into the final day and really fancied the podium’s top step once more. Unfortunately, an error on the Aghii Theodori stage robbed the Ford Fiesta RS WRC of a wheel and him of any hope of the win.

At the end of that season, it was time for Solberg to make a decision. The time had come for the move to rallycross and the PSRX outfit was born. The 2013 season was about finding his feet in a new discipline.

For 2014, the FIA recognised world rallycross with its own title and Solberg dominated, winning five from 12 rounds in a DS3 Supercar designed and engineered brilliantly by his own team. The following season delivered more of the same, more dominance and a successful title defence.

One of the biggest moments of Solberg’s career came in the boardroom rather than behind the steering wheel, when Volkswagen Motorsport handed its WRX programme to Solberg’s team and he ran it on behalf of the German car giant. And he ran it with aplomb.

Across two seasons, PSRX Volkswagen Motorsport took both the drivers’ (with Johan Kristoffersson) and teams’ titles, with the Polo R Supercar winning 19 of the 24 races.

“Honestly, that was something very special for me,” said Solberg. “What was really important was the chance for me to show how I could make the change from the driver to the team principal.

“It was a fantastic opportunity to work with Volkswagen – one of the biggest car makers in the world – and I didn’t have to work so much on the engineering side.

“For me it was about working with the people and bringing the team together. When I had driven with guys like Colin [McRae] and Tommi [Mäkinen], that gave me a real understanding of how to help Johan and how to make a team into world champions.”

Passing on that expertise has become a family matter in recent years as Petter and Pernilla’s son, Oliver, moved up through the ranks.

Solberg Jr has impeccable genes. Aside from his father’s triple title-winning success, Pernilla is also a driver worthy of a place on the world stage. Meeting and marrying Petter, she selflessly gave up a career which was building nicely.

Now, the driving’s down to Oliver. Already a member of the Hyundai Motorsport factory squad, history looks ready to repeat itself.

But few will forget the original Solberg: a world champion in a World Rally Car.

Photographs: Prodrive, Ford