Wilson leads tributes to departing Solberg

M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson has paid tribute to Petter Solberg after the ace Norwegian announced yesterday that he wouldn’t compete in next year’s FIA World Rally Championship.

Solberg, world champion in 2013, has been unable to secure a ride for 2013 having tried without success to land the third seat in the Qatar M-Sport World Rally Team line-up. He spent 2012 driving a Ford Fiesta RS WRC for the M-Sport-run factory Ford team, claiming four podiums and 44 stage wins.

“It will be strange to begin a WRC season with no Petter Solberg in the service park, and I will miss him on a personal as well as a professional level,” said Wilson. “When we first signed him back in 1999, he was a fresh-faced youngster with a lot of potential and equally a lot to learn, and when he returned to Ford more than a decade later as a world champion, it was like he had come home.

“It was a pleasure to have Petter in the team this year and we are delighted to have shared in some of his many successes in rallying. We wish him well for the future.”

Ford Racing senior manager Gerard Quinn added: “Petter has been a charismatic and popular member of the service park for over a decade, and we are sure that motorsport has not seen the last of him. All of us at Ford wish him every future success.”