Oliver Solberg feels he did not do enough preparation after Estonia to be ready for Finland
Photography by Toyota
Words by Luke Barry & Colin Clark
Oliver Solberg has admitted his breakthrough Rally Estonia win affected his performance at last week’s Rally Finland.
Solberg made perfect use of a last-minute call to drive a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1, sensationally winning in Estonia before dropping back to WRC2 for Finland two weeks later.
Despite starting as the pre-event favorite, Solberg’s Rally Finland was one to forget as he crashed on Friday and then suffered without working wipers in the rain on Saturday.
With the benefit of hindsight, Solberg feels like he was not as well prepared as he should have been for Finland.
Solberg told DirtFish: “I think it was a massive learning curve for absolutely everybody around in the team and also myself and so on.
“I think the key this weekend was, you know, we didn’t have a lot of preparation, we didn’t have a lot of testing, and unfortunately that shows that in anything you do in life, even if you were on top of the world last week, in the highest class, even if you come back, you need to still prepare.
Solberg was again fast in Finland, but things didn't quite come together
“And we didn’t do that, so it’s as simple as that. That’s probably the reason why I had the feeling I had, but that’s not the reason why the result, what happened on Friday, you know, I separate those two things. I think what happened on Friday, as I said, was a bit of bad luck.”
Solberg vowed to not let the circumstances of Finland repeat themselves in the future.
“I’ve come from four wins in a row, and then three other wins before the Rally1. We were prepared, we were ready and there were three very similar rallies, so it was OK,” he said.
“Rally Estonia, big, big preparation, lot of hard teamwork, pays off again. This weekend, complete opposite, did not work. So from my perspective, I think it’s very important to have set goals, set targets, what we need to do, what we need to achieve, us together as a team.”
Solberg registered his first non-score of the year but still leads WRC2, and has a big chance in Paraguay later this month with his main rivals Yohan Rossel, Gus Greensmith, Robert Virves and Nikolay Gryazin all scoring.
He added: “We still have two rallies coming up. We are still in a very good position. Anything is possible.”
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Oliver Solberg, Rally Finland, Rally Finland 2025, WRC, WRC 2025
Publish Date August 7, 2025 DirtFish
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