Ken Rees has described the improbable set of events that forced his driver Petter Solberg to retire from day one of Vodafone Rally de Portugal.
Solberg, who was fastest on Friday’s opening test in his privateer Citroen DS3 WRC, had dropped out of contention for victory when he suffered a puncture on the day’s second stage.
However, the Norwegian started the afternoon loop of stages convinced that he could make up the time loss and keep alive his hopes of his first win of 2011 until the final day.
But another puncture on stage five pegged him back still further before he suffered two more deflations on Friday’s final run, which ultimately forced his retirement after he ran out of spare tyres. He will restart on day two albeit with a 10-minute time penalty as specified by the SupeRally regulations.
Speaking to Wrc.com, Rees explained: “He came on the radio [on stage seven] and said we’ve got two punctures. Like the first stage this afternoon he hadn’t cut a corner, he was driving sensibly so there was no reason why. Literally the punctures happened straight after the other.”
Rees continued: “He’d lost so much time [on the stage] we had to stop him because the risk of not getting him down the road section to service with anything less than four wheels on his car was too great.
“At the point in the stage he was 10 minutes back from the fastest car so we knew it would be beneficial to stop and pick up SupeRally penalties rather than the stage penalty. Obviously from a safety point of view it was the right thing to do. And he could have been excluded if he didn’t come back with four wheels.”
Despite Solberg’s retirement, Rees said his team could take plenty of positives away from the rally’s opening day. “We were fast and Petter was comfortable and happy with the car. All we want is for an event to go our way. It’s been a tough day but nobody out there tries harder than Petter. We’ll be back on Saturday and we’ll benefit from the next few days of running because we’ve got Jordan and Italy coming up and he’ll be able to get some more experience of the car.”
A dejected Solberg added: “I just don’t believe it, how is it possible to pick up four punctures in one day?”
Credit: World Rally Championship (www.wrc.com)
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