The WRC is heating up just as its main event is cooling down – DirtFish

WRC2 gets political

Unfortunately, the WRC2 in Chile was more like a courtroom drama than a sporting competition. No one likes to see matters settled in the stewards' office, but there was simply too much at stake to let it go.

Normally, Oliver Solberg's slow puncture would have been the turning point: “I was in the lead, feeling good and everything,” he said, “but then I felt something going down and thought, 'Ah, maybe it's easy.' just slippery.' It took about 4km for me to puncture, so it was a really slow puncture.

“Maybe the valve or something, I don’t know… but yeah, I don’t know. The tire is fine, I have the tire in the trunk and it’s not damaged, so I honestly don’t know.”

But Solberg's confusion would grow.

After changing the offending tire, Solberg set a strong pace again – narrowly finishing ahead of Yohan Rossel. He then began to retreat, but Rossel was angered at being trapped in the dust of Solberg and having to fight through the descended mist.

That night he made a request for a fictitious time on stage – a request that was granted. But Solberg was clearly not impressed that the stewards had decided to give Rossel up to 40 seconds back – a decision that boosted him from third to first.

The plot intensified when Rossel was docked on stage for a 10-second takeoff after the fact, but being informed of this ignited a fire in Solberg.