Oliver Solberg is ready for Rally Sweden: the WRC2 title quest starts for real

“Snow is my favorite condition, so Rally Sweden is probably the event I like the most. And it’s also my home round!”. For several reasons, Oliver Solberg couldn’t be more eager to take part in the second race of the 2023 World Rally Championship, at the wheel of the Å koda Fabia RS Rally2 fielded by Toksport WRT in WRC2 class. “The Monte-Carlo Rally has been a sort of warm-up”, Oliver told us. On the Swedish stages the game will get really serious.

Rally Sweden will be this year’s first where Oliver will be registered to score points in his WRC2 campaign, in which he has a single target: “To be World Champion”. If it happens, we would see the first OMP father-and-son world champion pair, as his father Petter secured the 2014 FIA World Rallycross Championship crown with OMP racewear and car components, as the HTE ONE seat.

For Oliver, the opening Monte-Carlo Rally was the opportunity to get comfortable with a brand-new car and with the “very professional” Toksport team. The first signals were extremely promising: apart a puncture on the second stage, and some damage carried after the contact with a rock, Oliver has been the fastest WRC2 contender in 10 from 18 stages; moreover, he was only out of the overall top 10 on five stages, even against the more powerful Rally1 machinery, and he completed the final Power Stage eight overall.

“The car has been fantastic”, Oliver said. “But it wasn’t just the car, it was the whole team from Toksport and, of course, my co-driver Elliott Edmondson. The result was more than I expected and more than I hoped for. The Monte-Carlo Rally has been an absolute blast and being in the top 10 overall on so many stages is something I’m really proud of. The result gave me good confidence for Sweden”.

In the meanwhile, Oliver tasted the Scandinavian snow securing the Race of Champions Nations Cup for Team Norway for the second consecutive edition, together with his father Petter himself. “That was fantastic”, Oliver commented after the victory. “When you start racing against drivers like Sebastièn Loeb, Mattias Ekström and Johann Kristoffersson from the beginning you get very nervous. But I had consistent lap times. When that happens, you don’t want to overdo it, you just try and drive as you always do. When it works out it’s a fantastic feeling”.

Competing for Å koda Motorsport and Toksport WRT, Oliver continues to use a broad range of Racing Force Group products as the OMP racewear, Bell helmets and the Zeronoise audio communication systems. “We are enjoying a good relationship with OMP since 12 years. The suits are always very comfortable and I have always been helped a lot, so it was automatic to adopt Bell helmets and Zeronoise devices when they became part of the same group. We are truly happy to work in this way”, Oliver underlined.

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