As most of you rally fans already know by now, the Norwegian handed his car to co-driver Chris Patterson for the last super stage of Rally Sweden last Sunday, after he was caught by the local police doing 112kph in an 80kph limit section while heading towards the start of the 5th stage on Friday.
While able to do the rest of the Friday and Saturday running, the actual ban kicked in effective as of 14:00 PM on Sunday, only minutes before the start of the last super stage of the event. Eventually, the whole thing ended well for the crew, as Patterson took no risks and brought home a 5th place for Solberg in his first outing with the new car.
“I was delayed leaving the service park after the midday service on Friday. I was of course eager to arrive at the start of stage five in time and I drove too fast,” explained the former WRC champion in a statement.
“I was stopped by the police officer and immediately declared myself guilty as charged which meant that the police withdrew my driving licence. However I, like everyone else, had the right to drive a car for 48 hours after the licence was withdrawn.”
“I was therefore allowed to keep on driving until 14:00hrs on the Sunday but not thereafter. Therefore I and my co-driver Chirs Patterson changed place in the car. I tried to get an exemption so that I could drive the last stage as well but this did not work.”
“I have admitted my fault and will pay the fines. I will be prohibited from driving in Sweden, but only in Sweden, for one to two months. So there are no worries, my dedication to the WRC will remain in full force.”
Speeding on the way to special stages is somewhat common in the World Rally Championship, although not many such “offenses” have made the headlines lately. In the 90s however, a bunch of drivers were “customers” of the local police during WRC days, including former world champions Tommi Makinen, Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz, as well as Estonia's Markko Martin.
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