On the one hand Oliver Solberg’s Croatia Rally was dreadful. On the other, it was brilliant.
He made a mistake on SS1. But after hat error which led to his retirement from the leg, to only lose three points to the championship lead (now an 11-point deficit instead of eight) and outscore erstwhile leader Elfyn Evans was a strong recovery.
Evans played him an assist when he also retired on stage three, but Solberg bossed his team-mate on Super Sunday – 13.1s faster across the leg and 4.7s up on the powerstage.
“I didn’t feel amazing, and he did a great job. So, you know the outcome,” Evans mused.
Solberg confessed he felt “bittersweet” about his weekend, considering how fast he was once he restarted on Saturday. The error was putting the hard tire on the car for Friday morning – a compound he had next-to-no experience on prior to the event.
“It was definitely a very expensive learning curve for this weekend, that’s for sure, after Friday,” Solberg told DirtFish. “But I think today at least I got more experience on the hard tire, using it a little bit more. And today’s stages are a bit more like Canarias style, so at least it’s a good feeling. And we did the job we had to do today, so in that sense it was fantastic.
“But yeah, seeing the speed and knowing the feeling and fighting with Elfyn… then for sure, you wish you did a bit better job on Friday. But OK, that’s life. You’ve got to move on and we’re still in a great position in the championship.
“You’ve got to do the maximum you can when you have hard times, and that’s what I said a few rallies ago: when you have hard times, you’ve got to do the best you can and maximize what you can and take all the points you can get. And learn from the small mistakes, because then the good rallies will come.
“There’s no problem. So [I’ve] just got to learn from the tiny mistakes. And globally, big picture, everything is very good.”
Solberg therefore heads into next weekend’s Rally Islas Canarias full of confidence, especially as Sunday’s stages in Croatia shared similar characteristics to Gran Canaria with smoother Tarmac and longer corners.
Solberg is confident he's learned his lesson and can fight back strongly in Canarias
The Swede was fastest on all four of Sunday’s tests.
“What happened, happened,” he said. “You’ve got to take it as an experience and actually seriously think about it and learn from it. I think I’ve done that and shown that today.
“It gives me great confidence for Canaries and a great feeling with the car and everything’s been working fantastically. So I just need to take a small step back when it’s a bit difficult and the rest is fantastic, so I feel very good.”
Asked if he had any concerns about the hard compound, which will be the prime tire in Canarias, Solberg affirmed: “Canaries it’s a different rally, it’s a different type of surface and much warmer probably. So I think for that type of rally, a bit like today, it’s working quite well.
“Still a difficult tire to drive, it’s still quite edgy. But at least on roads like this, it’s a more correct tire to use and for Canaries it will be no problem to use it. So, it’s just learning from the small mistakes and what I feel comfortable with and improve on that.”
