Solberg: My crazy weekend in Portugal

Do you remember that moment when you were really young and you fell over? One minute, you were running along and everything was perfect. The next minute you were lying on the floor wondering: "How did that happen?" I had that feeling on the Rally of Portugal last week.

How did that happen? How did we end up down a bank on the outside of a simple enough right-hander? It was crazy, just such a silly thing. I still can't believe it.

You'll often hear drivers talk about their slowest accident ever. Well, I'd like to see anybody beat this one. This wasn't an accident, it couldn't be. We slipped off the road at crawling speed.

But, Rally of Portugal was that sort of event: crazy!

The Ford World Rally Team was on a really good form when we arrived in Portugal: we'd had a very good run through Mexico on the previous event and our pre-event test for Portugal had been great; we were all very excited about it.

Before the night stages on Thursday, we had the street stage in Lisbon. Like last year, this was just incredible. Being able to race through a capital city like this is just amazing and seeing so many fans was fantastic.

But I'm all about the rallying and I couldn't wait to get out onto the gravel stages. My team-mate Jari-Matti [Latvala] and I had been fastest in qualifying, so we could chose our place on the road first. Jari was going to be last to start the stages and I would be right in front of him.

I must admit, I was surprised when I saw the Citroens going first and second on the road, but we had our strategy and we stuck to it. And we were right, although some rain on the final night stage on Thursday night did make it quite interesting!

Loeb's exit left Ford with a great chance of winning © XPB

That was nothing compared with the rain that was coming, however.

Everybody was talking about the rain when we got back down to Faro on Thursday night. And those people who weren't talking about that we talking about Sebastien Loeb's crash.

We had made a good start with the fastest time in the first gravel stage, but then as soon as we heard about Loeb going off the road I slowed down in the next stage. I took it easier and wanted to make sure we got through with no problems. Don't forget, at this point we still had more than 400 kilometres left in this race!

Loeb's accident did affect our tactics for the rest of the rally. Jari and I were first and second and we all knew that we had to make the most of this. Yes, Mikko [Hirvonen] was still there and very close to us, but the feeling was that we could control this situation and really make some good points.

The weather the next morning was terrible. The fog was bad and it was raining like crazy. The fog wasn't so bad, what made it really tough was the way the way the grip was changing so much.

It hadn't rained for such a long time on these roads and the gravel which the organisers had put on the road had been washed away to leave the bedrock. But this wasn't in all of the corners. In some places, the water gathered and we had deep puddles or deep mud. When you are coming to these places totally committed with the speed and the wipers full on, you can't always read where the grip is going to be. We were going from one corner where it was good to the next corner where there was nothing.

We got the message after the first stage on Friday morning that Jari was off the road. Straight away, we knew what we had to do. We had to slow down, we had to make the finish.

I was going steady in that next stage. Look at the onboard, there were no moments and then going into that left-hander I braked as usual. We weren't slowing down. The tyres had filled with mud and we were aquaplaning on top.

I braked harder again - the data logger shows we got 70 pounds of pressure on the pedal - but it wasn't enough and the car went off the road at walking speed. There was even time for my co-driver Chris Patterson to look up from his notes and say: "Oh, no..."

Latvala also retired in Portugal © XPB

As soon as we stopped down the bank I put the car in reverse and tried to back out, but I felt the clutch slip a little bit. I asked Chris to jump out and have a look if we could drive down and get out another way. We tried that but we couldn't get back up the bank.

I just honestly couldn't believe what had happened. I was numb, totally disbelieving. The shock was incredible. How had this happened?

How?

Yes, the conditions were really tough, but it was nothing we hadn't dealt with before.

And, of course, we then had to talk to the team. We had been given this incredible chance from Loeb and it had gone.

For the three years before I came back to Ford, I had been my own team manager, so I had a little bit of an idea of how this felt from the other side as well. I knew that Malcolm [Wilson, team director] would be angry, disappointed and massively frustrated. I wasn't looking forward to seeing him or the team when we got back to service.

But these things happen. It sounds easy to say, but in this sport, this kind of things can happen. It doesn't make it any easier.

I was sorry for Malcolm and the team and everybody who had worked so hard. I was also really sorry for myself and Chris. When Loeb had crashed on Thursday night, for a moment, I had thought: "We could be leading the championship here."

You know I want to win rallies so badly. So badly. It really hurt me what happened on that stage.

The meeting with Malcolm was very, very professional. He made his point and we moved on. Everybody in this team is desperate to win and Saturday was about picking ourselves up and going again.

Solberg ended up on the podium in the end © XPB

Fortunately the Friday afternoon stages had been cancelled, which meant there was a chance of getting fourth place back. And that's what we did.

I was pleased to get back to the Fiesta RS WRC and drive again. The conditions were tough, but not so bad as Friday. It was good for the confidence and the feeling to be driving again.

And we got fourth, which then became third after Mikko was excluded. You have to feel sorry for the crew when this kind of thing happens after an event - and it is not the way we wanted to make the podium on Rally of Portugal.

But, we have to take these points. We're closer to Loeb in the championship and, after things looked really bad on Friday, things didn't look quite so dark when we left on Sunday.