1,000 Greatest Drivers: Petter Solberg

The fact that he won both the rally and rallycross world championships immediately before the goats of both disciplines went on their power runs makes him weirdly underrated.

Even though I don’t think I know anything about rally racing, this was easier for me to write than the Björn Waldegård one and I think it’s because it’s a lot easier to find information about Solberg’s era and also that his career gives me a lot more to work with considering he became the first driver to win FIA titles in two completely different (albeit quite related) sports. His career ended up looking worse in retrospect than it did at the time because Sébastien Loeb went on to win eight consecutive World Rally Championships and Johan Kristoffersson won seven out of eight consecutive World Rallycross Championships not long after Solberg’s titles (although Kristoffersson skipped 2019 to compete in the World Touring Car Cup). While Solberg is not the all-time great that Loeb and Kristoffersson are (I gave both of them #1 seasons), he’s still the only man to beat both series’ goats, so I think he doesn’t get the respect he deserves. I planned to release this on the 17th since it was the anniversary of Solberg’s first WRC win, but I ended up not finishing until the 18th, which is fine since it’s his 50th birthday.