Solberg: 'Japan win is best of the year'

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Solberg: 'Japan win is best of the year'  
Japan - Subaru - Petter Solberg - 05/09/2004 10:26:14
  


Rally Japan winner Petter Solberg has admitted that his run to victory on this weekend’s event has been his best of the season, and that a successful result for his Subaru team on home soil was a major incentive in his dominance of the event.

The Norwegian won 11 of the event’s 27 stages and led from start to finish. He ended the event – which has been making its debut on the World Rally Championship calendar this year – a full minute and 10 seconds ahead of his closest rival, Citroen’s drivers’ title leader Sebastien Loeb.

“This is the biggest win that I’ve had all year,” Solberg said. “We’ve never had so much support [from the fans] on a rally, and it is a big honour for me to win on Subaru’s home soil here in Japan. We’ve had no problems at all with the car – it worked well – and that was the best thing about it.”

By taking victory, and finishing ahead of Loeb and Ford’s Markko Martin, Solberg has moved past the Estonian to re-take second place in the standings after three rallies in which he failed to finish. He still lies a full 30 points behind Loeb, however, with only five rallies of the season remaining and remains reticent about his title prospects.

“I can’t really think about it,” he said. “I’ve just got to keep doing the best job that I can at each and every event and then just see what happens.”

Loeb is happy to have emerged with second place on an event on which he wasn’t expecting to do well, however, as the Frenchman and his Citroen team have only recently become frontrunners on gravel events and he was always looking at this weekend’s event as potential to score points rather than go for a podium.

”I started off with my usual strategy of taking the first day fairly easy and seeing what happened,” he said. “If I had been fast, I would have pushed for victory, but once I saw how quick Petter was I didn’t want to do anything stupid. It was a tough rally, and you couldn’t take anything for granted, so I’m very happy with second place. It was much better than I could have expected.”