Solberg reflects on his mistake that costed him the win of Rally Islas Canarias

Oliver Solberg is talking about the mistake he made on the penultimate stage of Rally Islas Canarias which led him to retire from the second place and admits that he has still to learn from small details in order to get better in rallies.

Solberg showed an amazing performance again with the Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 as he won six stages at Rally Islas Canarias and was fighting for the lead with Sebastien Ogier. The young driver initially passed Elfyn Evans and Sami Pajari on the overall classification on Friday afternoon and moved up to the second position overall. He managed to build a safety net as he was able to increase his gap from the third Evans on Saturday afternoon while he started the final day of the rally in a positive way by winning the first two stages on Sunday. In fact, he was still fighting with Ogier for the lead as he was just 2,2 seconds behind the nine-time WRC Champion at the end of Stage 16. Unfortunately, he hit a barrier after a jump in Stage 17 and was forced to retire as the front right wheel was off the car, so he scored zero points at Islas Canarias. After the fifth WRC round, Solberg slipped behind Pajari on the drivers' standings and is in fourth position, but he is just four points behind his teammate.

"The flow in the stage and the speed was good, but I wasn’t really over-pushing either", Solberg said.

"I think I was six-tenths off Ogier on that split.

"It was this corner with a jump in it. 

"In the morning, obviously, we were much slower, so I didn’t really jump much and I didn’t expect this car to jump that much. 

"Just a small mistake, and I jumped out of line a bit into the bank.

"It was a little bit hard to judge, and a small mistake.

"Stupid still.

"But when you are fighting, it’s easy to say that you’re happy with P2. 

"That was the goal too, just to try and see how it goes. 

"Maybe you just get satisfied with P2, but when you’re only two seconds off...

"For sure, I have to try to stay positive, look forward, keep pushing and just move forward.

"I don’t have so many rallies in the car and already a few wins. 

"I just need to improve small details and do better. 

"The speed and the feeling is there, so that’s fantastic, but I just need to improve the small details".

Source: wrc.com

Photo Credits: Toyota