RETURNING STARS MAKE THEIR MARK
IT WAS 1981 AGAIN. STANDING AT THE SIDE OF a frozen runway in northern Sweden, I revelled as the peace was shattered by the urgent, crisp bark of an RS1800. The co-driver jumped out and shouted: “Ten minutes, boys.”
Fuel, tyres, two sips of tea, and Petter and Pernilla Solberg were back aboard the family Ford Escort and gone. Still leading, still smiling. With last year’s Rally Sweden Historic winner Mats Jonsson back in his Group A Mazda 323 and a good few other well-wheeled Audi quattros on the entry list, the Solbergs were expected to be blown away. They weren’t.
In a beautiful Escort, period prepared to the final nut and bolt by Petter’s former co-driver Phil Mills and his Viking Motorsport concern, the Solbergs were well and truly on song. Fastest on three of Friday’s four stages, they just missed out on the win after slipping off the road on the ski-slope section of the Hagfors stage on Saturday.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Solberg. “It was Pernilla’s birthday yesterday, so it was important that we came out and enjoyed ourselves and we did that.”
They weren’t the only ones delighting in their return to competition. Standing among the thousands in the Torsby stage, I was astonished by the appreciation for the 2003 world champion – not least because of the incredible angles at which the Escort came into view. Previous four-wheel-drive cars had seen just one corner here; braking, turning, accelerating. To stand any sort of chance,
Petter had to make a few more corners. He threw the car one way, then the other; he was on the throttle harder and earlier than anybody else. Commitment, self-belief and natural ability carried 37-year-old technology from apex to exit quicker than anything else.
Not far behind, another driver wound the clock further back. Now we were in 1967.
Welcome back Rauno Aaltonen. Half a century after his last start on the Swedish, the 80-year old was back for another shot. And in many ways, the former 1000 Lakes, Monte and RAC winner was in for the toughest and roughest ride in the narrowest car in the field.
Last month it was a real pleasure to talk to Carlos Sainz Jr about his first time driving a stage in the World Rally Championship, and last week it was the same feeling to talk to Aaltonen about what he’d just done. Typically, for a man who’d been right at the top of his game, each question was given the same consideration you’d have expected when he was fighting Erik Carlsson and Timo Makinen through the 1960s.
Talking about the conditions, the same frustrations were evident as for world champion Sebastien Ogier – even if they were expressed with slightly less vigour by the superstar octogenarian.
“All the stages were more difficult than expected,” he said. “This is because of the weather. The ice was firm, but it wasn’t firm enough and we had ruts. When the car was jumping out of the ruts, there was no traction from the snow on the outside – a couple of times we got the pendulum effect and we were approaching the snowbanks! I’ve done events like this in the past in Scandinavia, but previously the roads were ploughed and had a very hard ice base [which didn’t rut], but we cannot complain. This is the sport and these are the world championship roads. I’ve really enjoyed this event and I’ll certainly be back if there’s another chance.”
It doesn’t matter where a legend like Aaltonen finished – suffice to say the pukka BMC Cooper S wasn’t first (that was Kenneth Tomasson’s 323, with Jonsson’s Mazda third behind Solberg), but he wasn’t last either.
He was a class act.