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Woohoo, Petter Solberg just won the Superspecial stage at the Swedish Rally and is thus off to a good start! The Superspecial was driven on a 1.9km horse track in Karlstad, which accounts for the 4.1-second spread among the top 10 drivers. Still, Solberg is in the lead, 0.5s ahead of Latvala, with Hirvonen and Loëb following behind. I guess that means Sebastien Loëb’s car arrived safe and well! Big brother Solberg, Henning, is in 5th place.

While Scandinavians or other Nordics have a not-so-surprising tendency to win this, the second event on the WRC calendar, they may not have such an advantage this year - the snow is all but melted away.

I would like to post some photos from my trip to the Swedish Rally in 2006, but alas, I believe they were lost in a disk crash a while back. Instead, check out the video of Petter Solberg during the shakedown in Sweden, after the jump.