Petter Solberg: Mud, sweat and tears

Hey, we're here, we're on the start line of Rally Norway and I'm so excited. It's going to be a fantastic event. Have you seen the weather? The roads are perfect and the snow is incredible.

Do you know, a week and a half ago, I still didn't know if I would be starting this rally. But then we signed the agreement with our final sponsor and everything came into place.

I have to say a very big thank you to all of those sponsors who are working with us, they made their decisions in three or five days, which was crucial for the livery of the car. And the livery of the truck.

We bought the truck a couple of weeks ago, but it was still red and white - we had to work like crazy to get it in the silver and black colour scheme. Let me tell you, my family and friends have worked like hell to get us here. I have been at home for one day and one hour since Christmas.

This thing is all about never giving up, that's the most important thing to remember - and that's what our team motto is.

But it's worth it. We're here and we're starting the event. I think it's fair to say that if this hadn't been Rally Norway, I probably wouldn't have put quite the same sort of effort into getting everything sorted in time. But it's my home round of the world championship. I had to be on this rally. I simply couldn't miss it.

Okay, the car is a little bit older than had been the original plan, but it feels good. Because of sorting out so many of the other details of getting to the start of the rally, I didn't actually have so much time to drive the car. I did two-and-a-half-days testing in the car before we got to shakedown this morning.

The times at shakedown weren't bad at all. We can make a couple more changes to the car and I think it will be good. The chassis feels really nice. On the shakedown we had a couple of fast places and I have to say, it would have been nice to have had a bit more from the engine. I was sitting there urging the car on a bit faster.

We'll see what happens, I'm as interested as everybody to see how the car works on the first stage.