Petter Solberg - How good is he really?

[raphael123]

I know he has had a poor car for a long time now. And you have to admire his loyalty to the team (is he on a fat pay cheque?), however he does make an awful lot of mistakes for someone so highly rated. A bit like Gronholm, who whenever is pushing hard, seems to over-do it and spin or even worse crash.

The commentators this weekend were all banging on about 'ah poor Peter, bad luck again' when his car failed him - but his car failed him due to his driving error! Just because it wasn't an outright crash, it was still his action which resulted in his car failing on him.

I think Gronholm is better than Solberg, but it would be very tight. But I think if he was team-mate alongside Loeb these days, he would be well and truly beaten.

I know both Gronholm and Solberg are more popular than Loeb, but Loeb is without doubt a cut above these two great drivers. They are probably the only two drivers who could come close to challenging Loeb to be honest.

[cut the b.s.]

Petter has a great personality, he really is good at the PR end of things, manages to look like he is having fun and not wishing he were somewhere else like some others do, when things are right for him he is very fast but he seems unable to keep it all together when its not.

I rate him as a good driver, definitely not a 'great' driver, in fact hes is one of the worst drivers ever to win the the title World Rally Champion IMO

[pino]

I think Petter is a very good and fast driver, and i also like him as person...he's very pleasant Give him a competitive car and he will fight for the title again

[tmx]

how many time this has been discussed already. just wait until the year end and see if the team can get up to speed he could win a rally again.

but fine this is my opinion, marcus is a small amount better than loeb and could beat him with a right car. as for petter, i agree he could be less crashing sometimes, but the subaru is not up to speed so petter tries as hard as possible to compensate for that lacking which is why he makes mistakes. he's one of the worse driver which is why he had three runner up as well as the driver title.

in anycase its much more fun watching petter and marcus drive than loeb drive being so cool all the time. i don't watch rally to pick my one favorite hero and wait for opportunity to bash the rivals.

[Finni]

I think that opening message of this thread lacks larger perspective in its ratings. First of all I think that Loeb is the most complete driver in the wrc but I disagree in many respect. There is important factors to note:

A) Marcus just made wrc's record doing 15 consecutive points finnish. He has done one major error in last 15 races which is not much, IMO. We can guess why his reliability has improved with Ford.

B) Is Marcus better than Petter? Probably not. During 2005 they were equal with the same tyres and despite the fact that Subaru had (as they still have) considerable power-inferiority compared to 307 (appr. 15Hp). Maybe Subaru was otherwise better but I can hardly see that Petter was the weaker of those two.

C) During the year 2004 Petter had clearly the best outright speed in the championship. He would have won 7-9 gravel rallies if Subaru would have been reliable. On gravel he sometimes ridiculed Loeb and Grönholm. Of course Pirellis' tyre played some role in that succes (like in 2005 Michelin played crucial role in Loeb's superiority) but the situation certainly indicates that Petter was at least parallel to Marcus and Seb in that point. As Marcus has only became older and older it would be untenable to see that he has improved compared to Petter. Loeb, in contrary, is improved in my view from that year when he probably was inferior to Solberg in terms of actual gravel pace.

D) Nowadays Subaru is heavely inferior both to Focus and C4. Chris Atkinson was able to set very good times already in his rookie season. Now he is loosing to Petter perhaps even more than Sordo is loosing to Loeb. And Sordo in that point is scarcely faster gravel driver than Atkinson. Being open to see considerable car differencies (so typical in all major branches of motorsport) I would say that comparison to team-mates hints that Petter's pace doesn't shame compared to anyone. Of course we can note that team-mate comparison often include vulnerable presuppositions. That's how it is. But it's still better indicator than naive and unreflective preconcept that all cars are very close each other and consequently time-sheets as such tells the truth about forces of drivers.

E) It's worth to note that C4 has easely the best straight line acceleration. As they are nearly perfect also in other respects (driver and car's behaviour) the result is superiority. For some reason PSA-company's rally teams have always had superior acceleration (reported by drivers and clearly seen from virtual spectator every time). Last year Focus was better in corners than Xsara but straight line speed kept Xsara in contention. Now when C4 has the best straight line speed Fords are in difficulties because C4 is obviously very good also in corners.

D) One extra point about Petter: it has been very typical that since 2002 his team-mates have really struggled to be anywhere near. Mäkinen, Hirvonen and Atkinson have all lost some of their reputation when driving with Petter. For instance Hirvonen seemed utterly slow beside Petter but after he got Focus he seemed instantly quite decent and promising. It's usually said that Hirvonen just was not in home in Subaru but I would say that his "improving" was probably as much depending on how Subaru was overrated due to its superb driver and how Focus was underrated by lack of top-drivers.

I think that contrary to opening message of this thread which was full of "feelings" this post involves some argumentative substance. I hope that possible counter-responses do the same.

[cut the b.s.]

[quote="Finni"]
A) Marcus just made wrc's record doing 15 consecutive points finnish.

[quote]

One word, 'superrally'........

[Corny]

Mäkinen lost his reputation next to Solberg? I don't know, he was at age by then and BTW, Mäkinen beated all his team mates on Mitsubishi by far. I don't think you can say that

[A.F.F.]

Dear Finni.

Some members have not joined till recently to this forum so, if you want some argumentative substance in replies, I'd recommend you put links to prove your points, for instance, 307 having appr.max 15 hp more than Impreza at that time or C4 vs. Focus.

[A.F.F.]

Oh, and I btw refuse to believe Solberg outrallied Makinen off the calendar. I very much believe that Mäkinen's huge roll in Argentina put an end to it. He was totally different man behind the wheel after that. Before it, I didn't see Petter nowhere near Mäkinen in results.

[Finni]

Yes, ok, he didn't lost his ultimate and historical reputation but his current reputation went down. He looked really bad against Petter. By the way, he was younger than Grönholm is now.

cut the ball:

OK, this record is fuelled by superrally rules but one major mistake in 15 races indicates still some reliability in that era.