Petter Solberg WRT

[AndyRAC]

All 'ifs' and 'buts' - if my Auntie had balls, she'd be my uncle......

[Finni2]

what ???

he retired before reaching 2nd split until then was 0.4 down....

plus without anyone doing mistakes i think none would have gained or lose his place....

Yes, according to Petter they were 5 secs ahead of Ogier just before crash. According to Petter poduim guys said that he would have won the rally without mistake. I guess we are not seeing all split times that teams can see.

You are also wrong when you say that Petter's fast stages happened only when other Citroens were not pushing. You can check for instance afternoon run from friday, covering more than 60 kilometres when Petter was seven seconds (or something like this) off from Seb who was storming after his mistake. Loeb was the fastest Citroen overally. But in my view Petter was very near to Ogier in terms of absolute pace and clearly faster than Sordo.

By the way, it's unfortunate that we have to even discuss about who was genuinely fast because with old road-position system everyone could see the real pace differences for the whole rally.

[Finni2]

Ogier is really refreshing case in rallying. He will be the one who pushes Loeb away from his place. I appriacate the way how Ogier started to fight when he had a chance for the win. In the last stage he started to loose ground but toward the end he pushed like crazy and was near to succeed in it. In the first ss of sunday he was also pushing like craze before his mistakes. If watch his in-car the cuts were amazing before he lost it (at that point he was ahead of Loeb in splits).

[bretddog]

He is quoted in the Norwegian newspapers being 5.5 and 4 sec up on Ogier/Latvala, at 5.5km when he crashed. Well... Of course in some way that's impressive, but more I think it just shows that he was on an all-or-nothing mission. And personally I think that speed was borderline to "stupid". It would likely never last for 30 km. I fail to see how this is good risk management, to take such approach when the 2nd position in the championship was so tight on points. But however insane it sounds, the way I understand Petter's mind, I actually believe he saw a possibility of closing in on Loeb in the chamionship points. Of course, that's a completely unrealistic hope for any sane person. But I think for Petter it's actually not.. If he sees even a slight possibility for that he will give it all, pluss a little more. So NOW I guess he will lower his aim for the runner-up spot.

[mjh]

I guess we are not seeing all split times that teams can see.

My understanding is that the dataloggers fitted by ISC to each car feed realtime information to the teams on progress along the stage, not just splits.
The teams get a graphline that shows how each of the cars (including competitors) in the stage are performing.

[Brother John]

Petter was over 5 sec ahead of Latvala and 4 sec ahead of Ogier when he went off, without it he would have won the event.

Yes he was to fast, thats all! mokin:

[serial jeff]

He is quoted in the Norwegian newspapers being 5.5 and 4 sec up on Ogier/Latvala, at 5.5km when he crashed. Well... Of course in some way that's impressive, but more I think it just shows that he was on an all-or-nothing mission. And personally I think that speed was borderline to "stupid". It would likely never last for 30 km. I fail to see how this is good risk management, to take such approach when the 2nd position in the championship was so tight on points.

Very true, but I think it's not all bad. I suspect Petter doesn't really care about getting 2nd place in the championship, he just wants to win rallies. It sucks to crash on the last stage, but at least now he's 5th in the championship, which puts him in a much better position to win Portugal. Being 2nd really screwed him over in New Zealand since he was forced to run first on the road on day 2 and end up way behind.

[WRCS14]

Anyone who has competed knows that at times taking a chance is required to be fast at this level. I believe the factory drivers will always take more risks as they dont have to deal with the consequences in the same fashion. Im sure many have seen the incar video on youtube with Colin in Rally GB 2001 where he takes cuts of maybe one to two feet on nearly every single corner, the stage times were unbelievable but the end result we also know. Atkinson once said in an interview I recall that because he hadnt the same experience when he started in the WRC he had to push harder and take more chances to be the same speed then some one who grew up driving in WRC since say 17 or 18.

When you foot the bill yourself after an off its a different kettle of fish. I think it will be unbelievable is Petter is prepared to take the risk to try win another rally. Some one like Matthew Wilson takes much less risks and hence finishes lots of rallys which is good for him if thats what he wants to do but the results dont come.

[ridder]

Originally Posted by ridder
You can't compare things by ONE stage can you?

i think you can because it was a stage were all three citroen were pushing like hell...during an event there are very small parts were drivers push to their absolute limits so its not indicational of true speed.

So let's compare their speed by stage 9 of Jordan rally, Solberg ahead of Loeb and Ogier by 5 seconds when everyone is pushing, so that means he's way faster that both of them no?

... oh wait he lost 30 seconds on the stage right after...

so much for the stupidity of comparing speed by single stage.

[jbmarcus21]

Petter's son is now ready .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYw6iEeBOVs