Perfectpetter’sperfectpresent

Petter Solberg gave his wife and co-driver Pernilla the best birthday present possible with an entirely dominant run on Rally Sweden Historic.

The 2003 world champion wheeled out his Viking Motorsport-built Ford Escort RS1800 to win a shortened event for the fourth time in five attempts.

The biggest threat to a Solberg victory was the cold he was suffering when the event started. “I was sweating like hell,” he said. “I thought about not starting, but once we were there, everything was good. Driving the car was a lot of fun and it was a nice birthday present for Pernilla.

“This rally has reminded me how much I like power steering though. It was bloody hard work at times!”

Two-time Rally Sweden winner Mats Jonsson was the Solbergs’ nearest rival, with the Mazda 323 driver finishing just over a minute behind in second place.

With Sweden being just his second snow rally, repeating his heroic Monte Carlo WRC 2 Pro class win was always going to be tricky for Briton Gus Greensmith. But he did the next best thing. He landed a second successive podium with third place aboard his M-sport Ford Fiesta R5, a result which was enough to retain his place at the top of the table. Greensmith suffered gearbox problems on the second day, but was generally baffled at the indifferent grip beneath him.

“Reading and feeling the grip is one of the things I’m best at,” he said, “but one in three corners, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think it’s probably an experience and a conditions thing, but when you consider I could win Monte, where the grip was changing all the time, this hasn’t been the best.”

Mads Ostberg won WRC 2 Pro despite feeling ill-at-ease in his Citroen C3 R5, with Kalle Rovanpera a distant second after putting his Skoda Fabia R5 in a snowbank for three minutes on Friday’s second stage.

Ole Christian Veiby was the event’s fastest R5 car and won WRC 2 in his Volkswagen Polo. The Norwegian turned in arguably the drive of his career, demonstrating both pace and consistency to bring the car home ninth overall. His Volkswagen Sweden team-mate Johan Kristoffersson had featured at the sharp end of the leaderboard and posted similarly strong times, but his hopes were dashed with a Saturday afternoon trip to a snowbank.

Four minutes in a Vargasen snowbank interrupted what had been a sensible and constructive Swedish debut for WRC 2 challenger Rhys Yates in his Skoda Fabia R5. The Derbyshire driver did, however, achieve his goal of levelling a steep learning curve by slashing the gap between himself and the R5 benchmark to a second per kilometre on some stages.

ERC Junior graduate Tom Kristensson collected a debut JWRC victory after long-time leader and pacesetter Dennis Radstrom went off the road late on Saturday. Despite going off, Radstrom’s 12 stage wins ensure he sits fourth in the table, one place ahead of Britain’s Tom Williams.

Williams was classified a career best fourth (edging a brace of sixth place JWRC scores last season) in the Junior standings with series new boys Roland Poom and Jans Solans, the Spanish R2 champion, second and third respectively.

Williams told MN: “This was a great result for me. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned from when I was here last year.”