Silly Season 2022

[rallyfiend]

https://www.autosport.com/wrc/news/h...ation/6658193/

Adamo has made a decision about Solberg's future with Hyundai. What that decision is, we don't know yet.

Is his decision relevant if he himself isn't there....?

[Danny0405]

Seems a little early anyway for Solberg even in a shared car.
The comparison with Rovanpera is not really efficient:
- Rovanpera made 7 RC2 class wins out of his last 13 WRC-2 rallies with wins against drivers such as Ostberg, Kopecky and Tidemand
- Solberg has only one class win in career (Estonia 2020 against Ostberg).

The car plays a role for sure but even in terms of Top 3 RC2 class stages, 9 over 5 rallyes this season is a little low (13 in 3 rallyes for Huttunen). And he has not proven to be very reliable in top of that.

Such a choice would be only based on what he did on the Arctic Rallye (but we have to recognize it was a good performance)

[mknight]

I have been saying this since it was announced that Solberg will drive WRC in Arctic.
As a first step Solberg needs to learn to perform over a whole rally (and especially when result is "expected"), not just doing a great stage time on one stage and crashing or losing 40s on next.
It doesn't matter if it's in WRC or WRC2, but in WRC2 it's a lot cheaper.

As you write this year he had one good rally... Arctic (and Rally Alba but that's hard to count as that wasn't really a "competition"). And a long string of bad or even terrible results.
He retired on 5 out of 9 starts, 4 of that were crashes and 3 of these were within first 3 stages of the rally. He didn't win a single rally he started (again disregarding Alba with Tanak penalty on purpose), and scored a single podium.

Putting him in WRC to score manu points spells disaster both to Hyundai manu points and Solberg himself.
Sure he could drive 4th WRC car, even for whole season. But does Hyundai have money (and available new car) for that?

[Rallyper]

I have been saying this since it was announced that Solberg will drive WRC in Arctic.
As a first step Solberg needs to learn to perform over a whole rally (and especially when result is "expected"), not just doing a great stage time on one stage and crashing or losing 40s on next.
It doesn't matter if it's in WRC or WRC2, but in WRC2 it's a lot cheaper.

As you write this year he had one good rally... Arctic (and Rally Alba but that's hard to count as that wasn't really a "competition"). And a long string of bad or even terrible results.
He retired on 5 out of 9 starts, 4 of that were crashes and 3 of these were within first 3 stages of the rally. He didn't win a single rally he started (again disregarding Alba with Tanak penalty on purpose), and scored a single podium.

Putting him in WRC to score manu points spells disaster both to Hyundai manu points and Solberg himself.
Sure he could drive 4th WRC car, even for whole season. But does Hyundai have money (and available new car) for that?

Did you count Ypres as failure?

[mknight]

I count it as bad result, which it was. (nowhere in my post does it say anything about "failures").

As his fan you should wish for him to have a best possible chance to develop, that doesn't necessarily equal rushing to WRC and point scoring nomination as fast as possible.
See Hirvonen in 2004 for clearest example.

[rp]

Oliver is not yet ready at all, but we can not know what Adamo is thinking, so everything is possible.

Without the doubt the best thing for him would be to compete full WRC2 season and get some wins and top three positions. The remaining of the WRC events with the Rally1 car to get more experience on the highest level. At first he should get a couple of top 5 results and in Sweden maybe even podium is possible, but he has to learn to complete events without the mistakes...

[seb_sh]

Solberg is one thing but more interesting is what he had to say about Breen: ask Malcolm.

[mknight]

Solberg is one thing but more interesting is what he had to say about Breen: ask Malcolm.

"When asked about Breen's possible move to MSport Adamo said "ask Malcolm" "

Sounds like typical Adamo talk to me. You can read it in any way you want. (Ask Malcolm cause it's done deal or Ask Malcolm if it's possible).

Remember that in Spain 2019 one day before it was made official he was saying that the rumors about Tanak going to Hyundai were just something the journalists made up. So don't trust him anything...

[Sulland]

This year became a bit different for Oliver since the Rally2 car became delayed after a trip to Sweden.
When Oliver and Petter started to test the new car it became crystal that development needed to continue.

Then instead of getting the Rally2 for the better part of the season, and have focus on WRC2, they had to continue with the outdated R5 and Adamo also wanted to check the youngsters speed in a WRCar as well. Huge success on snow, and an off.

Is it too early to push him up to Rally1, or give him one more year in the Rally2?
Hard to say really. 2022 is the first year with a new cartype for all involved, so maybe it could be smart to give him a Katsuta season to learn, and get results in 2023. He need to learn all rallies, and much more of the rallytrade before he will get the confidence to deliver. Oliver need to get orders to play libero in 2022, to finish rallies and pick up points if the topdogs fail to finish, or cars break down. And both things will happen.

If not, give him a full season in WRC2 to learn the rallies, and continue to develop the car. A new split season will in my opinion not do Oliver good.

[denkimi]

Perhaps we should wait till solberg shows he could be good enough to be in the wrc, like everybody else, instead of just relying on the name.

So far he hasn't proven anything, without his father he would have never even been considered for a wrc drive.