The penultimate event of this year's FIA World Rally Championship, the Central European Rally, offered a spectacular competition spectacle. It also kept Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 driver Oliver Solberg in the fight for the WRC2 title. In addition, the Swedish driver confirmed his speed in the competition.
The mathematics of scoring in the WRC2 championship is already making its presence felt in the Central European Rally. Oliver Solberg, for example, only entered the competition in the RC2 category, as he had already completed his seven points-scoring events, which he had nominated before the start of the championship. In the fight for the title, Solberg is waiting for the results of his rivals, who can still threaten him.
However, the Central European Rally eliminated one of Solberg's two rivals from the title race. While Solberg could no longer score points, for Yohan Rossel, the Central European Rally was his seventh nominated event. However, to overtake Solberg in the standings, he needed to win the rally, which took place in the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria.
However, the Frenchman struggled with damage to his car and eventually finished eleventh in the rally, thus losing the chance for the title. He remained behind Solberg in the standings and can no longer score points either. Oliver Solberg must therefore wait to see how his other rival, Sami Pajari, will fare in Japan in less than a month. If the fast Pajari finishes third or worse, Solberg will celebrate the title, otherwise the Finnish rival will be the one to enjoy celebrations.
Solberg himself proved at the Central European Rally that he is fast and the WRC2 title would be in good hands with him. Although he could no longer participate in the championship, he was always one of the fastest on the track and in the RC2 category, in which the ranking of all drivers counts regardless of the nomination for the championship points, he fought for victory with the crew of Nikolay Gryazin and Konstantin Alexandrov. In the end, Solberg and co-driver Elliott Edmondson succumbed to their rivals due to minor mistakes on Saturday, but lost only 16.5 seconds to them at the finish.
In addition to Solberg and Edmondson, other crews with Škoda cars were also seen at the Central European Rally. In the end, five crews with cars from the Mladá Boleslav brand fought for positions behind the top three in the RC2 category, seven of them ended up in the top ten of the category (including Solberg and Edmondson). And in the end, six Škoda crews succeeded in the WRC2 World Championship standings.
In the end, the Polish duo of Miko Marczyk and Szymon Gospodarczyk overtook compatriots Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak, as well as the Irish duo Joshua McErlean/James Fulton, so they finished fourth, fifth and sixth in the RC2 category, and scored points for third, fourth and fifth place in the WRC2 championship.
Gus Greensmith and Jonas Andersson finished seventh in RC2, Marijan Griebel/Tobias Braun (sixth in WRC2) and Armin Kremer and his daughter Ella were ninth (eighth in WRC2). Kremer confirmed his title in the WRC2 Masters Cup category, as he and Ella won all six events in this category this year. One WRC2 World Championship point for tenth place was won by the Czech crew of Věroslav Cvrček and Petr Těšínský in a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2.
