Petter Solberg began his season with a win in Portugal, however since then he has been embroiled in a fight with Mattias Ekstrom for the lead of the FIA World Rallycross Drivers Championship where he currently sits five points behind the EKSRX driver.
As ever the 2003 FIA WRC champion has a plan as the series moves on to Canada for the second half of the season and its a place that the Norwegian driver loves to race at:
“Canada is a great place to go racing,” said Solberg. “The atmosphere from when we all arrived here earlier in the week has been absolutely fantastic, just like it was for the last couple of years. We have a parade of the cars through the town on Friday and it’s just amazing to see how many people turn out to wave and cheer.”
Solberg has a successful run of results at the historic Trois-Rivieres circuit and is looking for a return to winning form again after missing out on a place in the Supercar Final at the last round in Sweden, but its challenging circuit that the former double World RX champion enjoys the challenge of:
“The track is just so cool. It’s a street circuit, so you have to be careful to be absolutely neat and precise. The key to making the car work around here is to not slide, not to put too much heat into the tyres and just try to stay cool. If you are behind somebody, it can be frustrating, but there are places to pass,” explained Solberg.
“This is one of my favourite tracks of the year, I won the final two years ago and won a heat last season – I want to do more of the same this week! I missed the final for the first time this year last time out in Sweden. We couldn’t quite get the speed out of the car, but before that we were on the podium three times with one win in five races and we finished fourth on the other two races.”
However Solberg has praised his team for the monumental efforts they have performed so far this year and that the PSRX Citroen DS3 is in an ever moving state of development with more on the way, “The season has not been bad, we have performed well and the PSRX team has worked flat out to develop the car. We have some new parts coming in Canada again, the car is constantly evolving, but we have to understand that we are fighting manufacturer teams here and that’s never easy. But, you know me. I will never stop trying.”
