With a 21-point deficit to overturn and just 35 points available, the perception is that Oliver Solberg has nothing to lose in the fight to be World Rally champion.
The Monte Carlo and Chile winner can see that perspective, but actually he does have something to lose.
The chance to win the World Rally Championship.
Ending Friday of Rally Italy Sardinia third, and ahead of his two rivals Sami Pajari (fifth) and Elfyn Evans (sixth), Solberg told DirtFish: “Many people say, I have nothing to lose, nothing to lose. Yeah, but I have the chance to lose, you know.
“I don’t want to lose the chance to be able to maybe win. That’s how I’m thinking, you know. So yeah, it’s easy to say flat out and what happens, happens. But I at least don’t want to throw the chance away if I have a chance. And now I have a chance. So let’s see.”
Thierry Neuville leads Sardinia overnight by 0.4 seconds from Hyundai team-mate Adrien Fourmaux, with Solberg 12.3s behind – despite a slow puncture on SS2.
But the Swede doesn’t think that cost him the lead of the rally tonight.
“I don’t think it cost me the lead,” he explained. “I think we had a lot of dust in the first one it seemed compared to many people further behind because I think it just got more more hard in the line, but yeah the puncture lost me around six seconds so… but again as I said it’s lucky-unlucky you know, it could be much worse and I could have lost a minute if you see some other guys today.
“So still the plan was just to not panic, stay consistent and and try to do a good job for the rest of the day and I feel with our starting position, compared to behind us, I feel we’ve done an amazing job and done the best we could with what we what we had today.”
What about Evans and Pajari?
As it stands, Evans is still in position to become world champion on Sunday – despite being the lowest classified of the three contenders.
Pajari has fallen behind Solberg in the running to become world champion – but both still have sizable arrears to Evans
“Happy might be stretching it a bit far, but I guess it falls within expectation to a point,” Evans told DirtFish.
“I think the afternoon was even worse than the morning in terms of the cleaning effect. But yeah, it’s been OK.
“It’s true that it’s going to be tough to catch anybody in front because they’re quite big gaps already,” he added. “But having said that, you know, we’ve seen so many punctures already this weekend.
“Of course we have to try to avoid them but of course if one of the other guys get one you can’t just crawl around because then you’re not going to benefit from that let’s say.
“So I think we still have to go with a good rhythm, we can’t just sit around let’s say. We have to keep going.”
Pajari lost a place to Sébastien Ogier on the final stage, otherwise his day might’ve looked a bit stronger. Instead he ended Friday just one position ahead of Evans, with a 17-point championship deficit to try and reverse.
“Always you can look for something to be done differently but, honestly, I was not really playing too much safe,” Pajari told DirtFish.
It doesn't really matter if you are absolutely maximum attack or you are a little bit trying to play safe.Sami Pajari
“I was trying to push in all the sections where I even a little bit felt that there is room to push. But it’s of course always so hard to judge where the limit is and so on.
“But anyway, we were clearly faster than Elfyn today and then Oliver was also faster than us. So in a way, you can see the effect of the road position role cleaning.”
Balancing how hard he can push, considering what’s at stake, is a “neverending gamble” according to the Finn.
“I think the issues can arrive,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter if you are absolutely maximum attack or you are a little bit trying to play safe. So I think that’s the thing.”
For Evans, with two Hyundais leading the rally and Pajari only one place ahead, things have fallen into place.
“Yeah, for the moment,” he said. “Of course, how that swings around with a different road position tomorrow, we have to wait and see.”
