After making a promising start to his rallycross career, Petter Solberg prepared for the third round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship with a private test near the RX Team base in Sweden.
The test took place on May 17, a national holiday in Norway, Solberg’s home nation, but rather than partying, the team worked on extracting everything they could from the Citroen DS3, managing to find an extra 80 horsepower for the Hungarian round at Nyirad.
“First of all we concentrated on trying to get the reliability of the car right,” explained the former World Rally Champion.
“Then we wanted to improve the speed. We’ve been working so hard on both of these things and now I think we’re really getting somewhere. The main thing is that we’ve got another 80 horsepower and that’s going to make a big, big difference – especially when it comes to getting off the line. I can really feel it.”
Solberg’s pace has been strong in the opening two rounds of the season, winning by eight seconds in the semi-final of the second round at Montalegre in Portugal, breaking the lap record in the process.
The circuit at Nyirad is a 1.220km circuit, made up of 52% asphalt and 48% gravel, ranging from 10 to 16 metres wide.
“All the circuits are new to me so it doesn’t make any difference, but I’m looking forward to it all a lot,” added Solberg.
“Wherever we go we’ve had a lot of support from all the fans and with the latest things that we have on the car it should be a really good weekend. Whatever happens, everyone in our team should be very proud: we have a fantastic car now. And there is even more to come…”
