Solberg happy with 2nd place in Japan

“Second is good enough today”

By

12 September 2010 - 13:57
Solberg happy with 2nd place in Japan

Petter Solberg was pretty satisfied with his 2nd place in Rally Japan, after a weekend of up and downs.

The Norwegian tackled the event with a bout of flu and had to battle with an energy-sapping fever through the first leg. Despite that, he completed Friday’s run of stages in the lead and held onto it on Saturday’s run (he briefly lost it after receiving a penalty for a jump start on SS13 but retook it two stages later when Latvala had a mechanical problem).

He was ready to defend it through Sunday’s eight stages but had to surrender it to Citroën’s Ogier because of a steering problem. He managed to drive around it on the final stages to finish the event in a pleasing 2nd place.

“I am so happy with second today”, he said. “I started this rally with fever and a really bad cold, so being second today feels quite good. Of course I do feel a bit disappointed of not winning after being so close, but second is good enough today!”

“I hit something quite early and could feel it right away that something was wrong”, he added. “For a while we were really concerned about not being able to finish the rally. But without this, I just know that Sébastien would have had to fight really hard to beat us today. My confidence was back this morning and I was ready for a big attack!”

Petter is currently 4th in the championship, and the 18 points scored today gives him a total of 118 points.

WRC

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