As son of a 2003 World Rally and 2014 and ’15 World Rallycross champion, and a Group N rally champion, team principal and now president of the WRC Commission, Oliver Solberg was destined to live his life through motorsport.

The Solberg family is one of the most passionate – and, of course, talented – you’ll find anywhere in the world, and Oliver has proved to be no different.

He may only be 22 years old, but the latest member of the Solberg clan has been driving for over a decade. Starting his journey racing crosskarts, Oliver soon moved into rallycross and drove his father, Petter’s, World Rallycross Championship-winning Citroen DS3 Supercar to roaring success.

But the rally stages soon beckoned in 2017, when the then 15-year-old began his career in Latvia in a Peugeot 208 R2.

The next big step came two years later, when Oliver strapped himself into a four-wheel-drive Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 in Europe and signed a deal with Subaru Motorsports USA in America to do select rounds – bringing the Solberg name back onto the side of a brand his father made his own in the 2000s.

A maiden win in the European Rally Championship proved his prowess, before a mixed WRC and ERC campaign beckoned – with support from Skoda – in 2020.

Hyundai snapped up the youngster in 2021 to drive an i20 R5 in WRC2, but Oliver received an unexpected chance to drive a full-fat World Rally Car on Arctic Rally Finland and finished a superb seventh overall. That would be the precursor to a top-team promotion in 2022, sharing a car with veteran Dani Sordo, but Hyundai’s i20 N Rally1 was off the pace and it proved to be a very difficult environment for an inexperienced driver. Solberg was let go towards the end of the year, and instead sought refuge in WRC2 where he proved himself to be the fastest driver in the field with a Skoda Fabia RS Rally2. This season he’s out