{"id":252417,"date":"2026-01-26T12:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T12:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/252417\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T12:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T12:21:09","slug":"solberg-wins-monte-carlo-to-take-early-championship-lead-dirtfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/252417\/","title":{"rendered":"Solberg wins Monte Carlo to take early championship lead \u2013 DirtFish"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> Oliver Solberg dominated the Monte Carlo Rally to take the early lead of the 2026 World Rally Championship. <\/p>\n

Having won on his Toyota debut at last year\u2019s Rally Estonia, few expected Solberg to win again as soon as the Monte \u2013 his first event as a full-time Rally1 driver.<\/p>\n

But the WRC2 champion took the lead on SS2 with a commanding 31s stage win, and never looked back.<\/p>\n

While he went off the road and into a field on Saturday and suffered a small spin on Sunday, Solberg remained calm in the treacherous winter conditions to record a controlled 51.8s victory over Toyota team-mate Elfyn Evans.<\/p>\n

He leads the championship by four points over Evans who won the powerstage and finished second on Super Sunday, beaten incredibly by Yohan Rossel\u2019s Rally2 Lancia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand it at the moment I think, it\u2019s another emotional day,\u201d said an emotional Solberg, before he embraced his father Petter and fianc\u00e9 Chloe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the most difficult rally I\u2019ve done in my life and it\u2019s my first rally in the car on Tarmac, first rally back at the full level. And here we are winning the whole thing. It\u2019s so demanding, it\u2019s been so stressful, just a big thank you to Toyota and the belief that I could deliver for you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oliver Solberg dominated the Monte Carlo Rally to take the early lead of the 2026 World Rally Championship.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[144347,144348,111,139,69,146412,213,87700,139135],"class_list":{"0":"post-252417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-monte-carlo-rally","9":"tag-monte-carlo-rally-2026","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-oliver-solberg","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-wrc","16":"tag-wrc-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}