Oliver Solberg leaves the Rally Chile as the WRC2 championship leader. Despite a brilliant chase on Sunday, he was unable to make up for the loss caused by a slow puncture during Saturday's stage. The overall fourth place gives him a lead at the top of the standings, but his rivals can still overcome it. Solberg can no longer score. In the Chilean rally, five Škoda cars finished in the top ten of the WRC2 category.
Solberg entered the event in Chile as WRC2 championship leader, so he started first after the RC1 cars on the tricky gravel stages of the rally. "These cars have a wider track than my Škoda Fabia RS Rally2, so I'm struggling to find a good line," Solberg explained. As expected, when Solberg was actually clearing the track for his rivals, the Fabia RS Rally2 driver was not the fastest on Friday, but second place in the overall standings gave hope for a good result.
In Saturday's leg, Solberg confirmed these hopes when he rose to the top of the overall standings of his category after three stages. However, in the afternoon, a slow puncture occurred on one of the stages, which required a tire change and a time loss of more than one and a half minute. For the rest of the event, Solberg and his co-driver Edmondson had to make up for the loss to their rivals. They climbed from fifth place to fourth in the final stage, behind teammates Gus Greensmith and Jonas Andersson.
The final leg on Sunday showed Solberg's unbreakable character as a champion and his desire to win. He didn't give up and instead showed how fast he can be with the Fabia RS Rally2. He won all four stages of the day. However, even though he gained more than 40 seconds on his rivals in the lead, it was not enough to move up the standings in a balanced starting field.
Solberg is in the lead of the championship after his performance in Chile, twelve points ahead of his pursuer Yohan Rossel and fifteen points ahead of third-placed Sami Pajari. Both rivals still have one more points event to go, Solberg has already scored points in the allowed seven races. With a good performance, the rivals can overtake the driver with the Fabia RS Rally2 at the head of the championship, leaving Solberg with his championship ambitions out of his own hands.
For the other Fabia RS Rally2 crews, the Rally Chile was a pleasant success. In total, the crews occupied positions three to seven in the rally, behind the third Greensmith and the fourth Solberg were the Poles Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak, the South Americans Fabrizio Zaldivar and Marcel der Ohannesian (a Paraguayan starting with an Italian license) and Jorge Fontena Martínez and Alberto Alvarez Nicholson, who finished first in the national standings to take the lead in the Chilean championship.
Two asphalt events remain in this year's FIA World Rally Championship: the Central European Rally, to be held in the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria, and the traditional final rally in Japan.
