Petter Solberg (born 18 November 1974), nicknamed "Mr. Hollywood", is a Norwegian-Swedish former professional rally and rallycross driver.
Solberg debuted in the World Rally Championship in 1998 and was signed by the Ford factory team in 1999. The following year, Solberg started his successful partnership with the Subaru World Rally Team.
With the Subaru works team, Solberg finished runner-up to Marcus Grönholm in 2002 and then became the first Norwegian to win the drivers' world title in 2003. In the following two seasons, he finished runner-up to Sébastien Loeb. Following Subaru's withdrawal from the WRC at the end of the 2008 season, Solberg secured private backing to start the Petter Solberg World Rally Team and competed with a Citroën Xsara WRC, a Citroën C4 WRC and a Citroën DS3 WRC. In 2012 Petter returned to a factory team, joining the Ford World Rally Team 12 years after making his WRC debut with the same team.
Solberg switched to rallycross for the 2013 season, and in the 2014 season he became the inaugural winner of the FIA World Rallycross Championship, after five race wins and nine podium finishes. He repeated his title success the following year. In 2017, Petter set up the PSRX Volkswagen Sweden team in partnership with Volkswagen Motorsport, and won the Team's Championship in both 2017 and 2018 before his retirement from full-time motorsport.
Solberg's son, Oliver Solberg, is also a rally driver; they have regularly competed together at the Race of Champions.
Solberg won a nationwide RC car championship the Norwegian Tamiya Cup in 1987 at the age of 13 as he inherited his interest of motorsport through his parents, mother Tove and father Terje, who were keen bilcross (an "inexpensive version" of Norwegian rallycross, similar to Swedish folkrace and Finnish jokamiehenluokka) competitors and rallycross enthusiasts. He used to help out around the home farm rebuilding competition cars, as he was not yet old enough to drive. Solberg entered his first bilcross in 1992, three days after his 18th birthday and only one day after he got his driving license. He went on to become Norwegian champion in rallycross as well as hillclimb in both 1995 (winning 19 out of 21 events) and 1996 (winning 15 out of 19 events). In 1995, he took part in his maiden rally, the Norwegian Rally Bjørkelangen, by driving a Volvo 240 in the Volvo Original class. His female co-driver by then was Maud from Sweden, nowadays spouse of his older brother Henning. In 1998, Solberg became the Norwegian Rally Champion, his brother Henning won this title five times in a row between 1999 and 2003.
By this time and with the aid of his compatriot John Haugland, who helped him on events in the late 1990s, the World Rally Championship team bosses were starting to recognize Solberg's potential and by the end of 1998, after winning a comparative test drive, he agreed to drive for three years as a junior pilot for the Ford Motor Company. Initially expected by Malcolm Wilson to maintain a somewhat lower profile, Solberg actually became a nominated points-scorer for Ford on, of all events, the gruelling test that was the Safari Rally in early 1999, after usual understudy to the team's star driver Colin McRae, Thomas Rådström, suffered an injury and was subsequently ruled out from taking part. He stunned many by finishing in fifth place and scoring both drivers and manufacturers points.
In 2000 however, Solberg was able to leave Ford's M-Sport outfit prematurely, due to an insufficient contract, to sign with the Subaru World Rally Team (SWRT), then led by a driving staff of Richard Burns and Juha Kankkunen. His first podium had to wait until the Acropolis Rally, Greece the following year, as an altruistic Solberg forsook as many of his own points as possible, as he did in dropping voluntarily from 4th to 5th in Corsica, to assist his senior teammate Burns in sneaking to the title.
In 2002 with four-time champion Tommi Mäkinen installed as his new teammate in the light of Burns' departure to Peugeot, Solberg won his first ever WRC event in Wales (Wales Rally GB) after a consistent display of driving prowess and an unlikely accident by Marcus Grönholm. In 2003 Solberg entered the final event, the Wales Rally GB, with himself, Citroën-mounted Sébastien Loeb and Burns in contention for the title. Burns withdrew before the event for health reasons and Solberg finished ahead of Loeb, launching him to his second win in Wales and his first and only World Rally Championship title. Solberg became the first Norwegian to win the drivers' world title.
In his title defence however, Solberg's winning of five of a possible sixteen events, including the hat-trick making Wales Rally GB, proved insufficient to deny the title to a now increasingly efficient Loeb. On Solberg's part, a perhaps unfortunate string of bad luck was encapsulated by three DNFs (retirements) in mid-season.
Welcoming a new teammate for the year in Australian Chris Atkinson, who replaced the disappointing Finn who had been the former Champion's SWRT teammate throughout 2004, Mikko Hirvonen, Solberg started his 2005 season brightly as he sought an immediate answer to Loeb, the Norwegian winning two of the first three events, in Sweden and Mexico. These successes coincided with the early seizing of a championship lead. He was, however, soon overtaken by a rampant Loeb, and was left to score 71 points for the year, pipping Peugeot's Marcus Grönholm to the championship runner-up spot on a tie break.
Solberg added an unwanted Wales Rally GB win after the death in a day three crash of fellow competitor Markko Märtin's co-driver, Michael Park, with Loeb sacrificing his victory on the road in order to avoid having to simultaneously celebrate the title. This would prove to be his final WRC victory. Solberg won three rallies in all, though was severely affected by bad luck while challenging for wins at the end of the season, most notably on the Telstra Rally Australia, where he was forced to retire after striking a wayward kangaroo.
For 2006, Solberg continued his partnership with the Subaru team, driving a new version of the Impreza WRC. His main sponsor was 24SevenOffice with a 5 million kroner sponsorship deal, a Norwegian record. His results, though, proved patchy in comparison to Loeb. While Loeb went on to register five rally victories on the bounce in a privately (Kronos) run Citroën Xsara WRC, his winning of the title unhampered even by breaking his arm at an advanced stage of the season, Solberg could only comparatively muster a handful of runner-up places on rallies all season — in Mexico, Argentina and Australia. Failure to claw his way any higher than sixth in the year's final points standings duly brought an end to the chain of top three drivers' championship appearances which Subaru had enjoyed since 1994.
Solberg did, at least, get his 2007 season off to a rather more auspicious start, managing a joint-career-best finish of sixth place on the Rally Monte Carlo. He surrendered a potential third-place finish in Sweden after a substantial time loss, as well as being bested by his brother, Henning, in the race for the final podium place on the siblings' home event – Rally Norway. In Mexico, Argentina and Sardinia Solberg struggled with his Impreza — technical problems caused two retirements and a plummet down the leaderboard in Italy. Good pace in Portugal and taking third place on the Acropolis Rally at least appeared to mark a turnaround in the quality of the younger Solberg's results, although even Greek event wasn't problem-free for the Norwegian as he experienced some damper problems.
Despite Subaru's confidence in their car performance and reliability built up during summer break tests, Impreza S12A failed again — Solberg had to retire on day two in Finland, after monstrous handling and steering problems which the engineers were unable to deal with. On the next round, Rallye Deutschland, where he finished sixth, the car by itself was reliable, but the Norwegian hit a rock on SS5 heavily damaging the steering, which had cost him considerable amount of time because the team wasn't able to fully repair it. The New Zealand event was another problem-ridden outing for Solberg — he described the handling difficulties as similar to those he had experienced in Finland earlier.