Petter Solberg and his Subaru team believe their long victory drought – stretching back more than three years and, incredibly, 51 rallies – could yet come to an end on this weekend's Wales Rally GB, an event on which the Norwegian has triumphed four times.
At the midway stage on day two, Solberg sits in fourth position, but over the morning's stages he has practically halved the 46-second gap separating him from leader Jari-Matti Latvala, despite insisting he is taking fewer risks than those ahead of him.
Having not won for what must seem to be an interminable length of time by his high standards, the 2003 World Rally Champion is clearly beginning to scent victory again – and beginning to push.
“It's been a good day,” the 34-year-old told
Crash.net in Swansea. “We've been struggling a little bit with the ice and it's still slippery, but on the muddy sections it's okay. Yesterday was more difficult to judge.
“We have to try to get some more grip on the ice, which is where we are struggling, but here everything can happen, I tell you – everything.”
Those sentiments were echoed by the Prodrive-run outfit's team principal David Lapworth, who urged that a win – for the first time since the same rally back in 2005 – is very much 'possible'.
“Petter seems quite relaxed,” the Englishman remarked of the 13-time rally-winner. “It's a difficult balance to get right, because we said from the beginning that we weren't going to win this rally by going mad and that you could win or lose it on the last corner of the last stage.
“It's all about trying to find that balance between being in touch and not being in a ditch. He's pretty happy with things when the conditions are good, but he is struggling a little bit when it's icy.
“I think [a win] is possible. For sure, to do the kind of times that Latvala has been doing there is a level of risk, and being first-on-the-road the level of risk is even higher, because you've got no warning and there are no marks in the ditch, so there has to be a chance of things going wrong.
