Fresh from thrilling hundreds of thousands of fans – with millions more watching around the world – at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed, Petter Solberg takes his Farewell Tour home for a record-breaking attempt at the Norges Råeste Bakkeløp hillclimb this week. Three-time world champion Petter will drive Volkswagen Motorsport’s sensational Polo R Supercar – the car his own PSRX Volkswagen Sweden team used to dominate the last two years of the FIA World RX series – at the hillclimb. And he starts the event with one aim: a new record. The previous record holder? That’ll be Oliver, his son. “I want to beat Oliver’s time,” said Petter. “He’s been telling me too many times now that I’m getting a bit old, asking me if he can clean my glasses for me… “He nearly beat me at Gymkhana GRiD in South Africa last year, now I can’t let him keep this record. I have a feeling he’s going to make some records of his own in motorsport, so I want this one and trying to do this would be perfect on my Farewell Tour.” What is Norges Råeste Bakkeløp?
The hillclimb, based in Målselv Fjellandsby, has been run since 2012 and is the biggest motorsports event in the far north of Norway. The festival includes racing, drifting, street cars and a street-legal drag race. Where is it?
Målselv is a municipality located in the far north of Norway, close to the city of Bardufoss and 1700km north of the capital Oslo. What’s the record?
1m41.33s, set in 2018 by Oliver Solberg in a Citroën Xsara WRC. What does Oliver say?
“I’d actually really like it if my father could beat the record. He’s amazing and so supportive of everything I’m doing. Unfortunately I can’t be there, I will be driving for Subaru Motorsports USA at the New England Forest Rally that weekend, but I will keep in touch for the whole time when I’m not on the stages. “And anyway, if he doesn’t beat my record then there’s nothing for me to go for when I go back to Norges Råeste Bakkeløp!” Event detail Name: Norges Råeste Bakkeløp Date: July 17-20 Based: Målselv Fjellandsby, Norway Surface: asphalt Website: www.bakkelop.no Petter Solberg’s Farewell Tour in full:
Goodwood Festival of Speed Location: Great Britain Date: July 4-7 Norges Råeste Bakkeløp Location: Norway Date: July 17-20 Gymkhana GRiD Location: Poland Date: September 7 Car: It’ll have a good handbrake…
“This is definitely one of the coolest events in motorsport now. Ken Block and Monster Energy have made an incredible job of bringing this drifting side of the sport to the people. I won this event before and came really close to winning last year when Johan [Kristoffersson] beat me. “But I also came really close to being beaten by my son Oliver – he was driving our [Citroën] Xsara in South Africa last year and if it wasn’t for an engine problem he might have beaten me. It’s actually a really tricky event, you have to focus and concentrate so hard – if you run even a couple of centimetres wide then you can lose your race. It’s intense, but seriously good fun as well.” *Petter will still compete regularly, but the focus will be on fun rather than winning. Focus on fun rather than winning. Did we even say that? The focus will forever be on winning…