However, having a competitive car to start the season with gives the man a big boost for the 2011 campaign, especially since he tackled all the bad luck in Sweden and Mexico with great success. Electrical problems in Day 1 of the Mexican event threw the Norwegian outside the Top 10, but he eventually managed to finish the rally in 4th place.
“I should be quite happy right now because the performance we have means we can fight on the top and that is very important,” said Solberg after the Mexican event.
“If you look at the [electrical] problems we had on the first day [in Mexico] we were lucky to get to the finish and get points at all. But if we had the luck we could have won Mexico and in Sweden also and that is frustrating to think of this.”
“It’s actually a bit crazy that I was slightly disappointed at the end in Mexico after the problems we had. Even then, I thought that the absolute maximum from 14th would be to finish fifth - and that would be so hard. But in the end we were fourth.”
Solberg is now resting 23 points behind championship leader Mikko Hirvonen in the overall classification, and the first chance of cutting that deficit will be in Portugal, between March 24-27. The Norwegian will do a test with his Citroen DS3 WRC one week prior to the event, after which he'll go all in for victory later this month.
“We’ll be fifth in the road on Portugal and that’s not a bad road position if the winter weather has been good to the stages,” said team manager Ken Rees.
“But as long as we keep getting the points then we’ll do okay. We’re no more than a win away from Mikko and we know we can achieve a lot more on the next events. We want wins but we learned last year getting points gets you up there in the championship and if we’d got two more points last year we’d have been second and not third. Petter has got a lot more to offer.”
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