Posted Monday, October 19, 2020 at 10:56pm

ON THIS DAY: 2003

Petter Solberg was fourth in the championship chase following round 10 of 14 – he’d retired after running out of fuel in Italy a fortnight earlier. And Prodrive’s active dampers had been left at home after that troubled Sanremo outing.

And then shakedown was stopped after a significant shunt for Solberg’s Subaru. Significant enough to twist the chassis and cut communications to one Corsican village as the Impreza WRC2003 used a telegraph pole to save it from a 180metre tumble into the sea.