With a little help from my friend

Andreas Bakkerud to Lydden victory with aid of Petter Solberg.

After his victory in the ERC opener at the Lydden Hill Race Circuit Andreas Bakkerud revealed that it was former Rallycross driver and 2003 Rally World Champion Petter Solberg who had contributed to his success. “A very good start of my season with a new team and a car that is still pretty new to me. We are on the right path and everything has worked out just perfectly for me this weekend,” claimed the ‘2010 Norwegian Carsport Talent’ from the city of Bergen while he put a new ice-pack on his hurting ribs.

“It is painfull, but the adrenaline kick in the A final helped much to completely forget about it. Three weeks ago I was in Italy to get myself in racing shape prior to the ERC start by doing some karting practice over a couple of days. Eventually I came home with either two broken or hardly bruised ribs. My boss for the past six months, Petter Solberg, gave me a fantastic pair of OMP racing gloves as well as a driving suit for Lydden, hoping those thing would bring me good luck. He will get all back soon and maybe he can benefit himself from the happiness I packed into this stuff here,” said Bakkerud with a big grin on his faith.

The youngster, who has been trained during the past two years as motor mechanic at the so-called ‘Stjerneskolan’ [star school] at Torsby in Sweden, where Petter Solberg has a workshop close to the home of his father-in-law, Per-Inge Walfridsson [the 1980 European Rallycross Champion], currently works for the WRC ace. “Petter has contributed a lot when we discussed about car set-ups and driving style. And he is motivating me during my racing weekends by sending a SMS with useful tips every now and then,” revealed the happy Renault campaigner on Monday afternoon.

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