Twenty years ago, Marcus Grönholm finally gave the Peugeot 307 WRC its first World Rally Championship win (after a controversial exclusion in Cyprus three months’ earlier) – but that’s not really what most remember about Rally Finland 2004.
Instead, it was all about three numbers: 15:18.5.
Reigning world champion Petter Solberg was enduring a pretty torrid weekend in Jyväskylä. Sick on the lead up to – and during – the event, the Subaru driver then crashed out after just a handful of stages.
He would return for the second leg as a bit of a testing exercise, but instead ended up making history.
Ouninpohja is one of the most fearsome stages in all the world of rallying – certainly one of the most famous. So any driver that can come out on top of it has clearly produced something special. But Solberg and co-driver Phil Mills were absolutely sensational that day – blitzing the stage record in what Solberg says was one of the few stages of his career that were just perfect.
Few single-stage performances have ever gone down in history as much as this did. Don’t forget, it gets faster now!
Ahead of the WRC’s annual visit to Rally Finland, Colin Clark sat down with Petter to relive that extraordinary effort, 20 years since it happened.
