Petter Solberg has started his 2016 World RX season perfectly with a win. Reigning World Rallycross champion won the first round at Montaleg...
Petter Solberg has started his 2016 World RX season perfectly with a win. Reigning World Rallycross champion won the first round at Montalegre circuit in Portugal, by winning the final race. He managed to do this despite failure of launch control system. He had to manual start his DS3 Supercar in semifinal and final race.
But Solberg did not make a good start as he struggled on day one with wet condition not favoring him. But an overnight setup tweak made wonders and he was second overall at Intermediate Classification behind Mattias Ekstrom.
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In second semi-final Solberg led from start to finish. But it was the final race where Petter Solberg was firing on all cylinders. He took the lead in very first corner. He took his joker lap on Lap four and made contact with Kristoffersson while exiting joker lap. End result, it broke the drive shaft of Polo driven by Kristoffersson. This caused him to spin out and further he also made contact with Loeb. So Loeb was out of contention for victory. Robin Larsson took his joker lap on fifth lap and Solberg moved to second. Finn Toomas Heikkkenen on lap six took his extra route option and was third when he joined the main field. Finally Solberg won the race, Larsson and Heikkinen finished behind him. Andreas Bakkerud finished fourth in his M-Sport built Ford Focus RX run by Hoonigan Racing Division. Loeb finished fifth in his debut event.
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Results Top Five
Pos | Driver | Car | Time/Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
1 |  Petter Solberg | Citroen | 4'03.992 |
2 |  Robin Larsson | Audi | 0.847 |
3 |  Toomas Heikkinen | Audi | 2.360 |
4 | Andreas Bakkerud | Ford | 3.775 |
5 |  Sebastien Loeb | Peugeot | 25.306 |
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