WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
Severalnewchallengerstakeaimatthereigningchampionjohankristoffersson.by Halridge
The postseason World Rallycross Championship video, produced for the 2017 FIA prize-giving, promotes all that is good about the sport. Despite having seen it many times, title winner Johan Kristoffersson couldn’t help being glued to a rerun at the recent PSRX team launch.
“I do still enjoy watching that,” says VW Polo driver Kristoffersson. “That’s rallycross itself: when they make a video like that and there’s some good music, there’s a lot of action in rallycross, so of course when the new season is just around the corner, you feel a bit even more motivated to start to compete again when you watch it.”
Despite being a class above last season, the 29-year-old does need to be motivated if he is to stand a chance of defending his crown.
The same goes for each of the 15 permanent 2018 entries. The PSRX team had things largely its own way last term and will start the opening round this weekend in Barcelona as favourites, but if the array of new teams, new cars and pre-season testing form are anything to go by, World Rallycross will be anything but predictable this year.
Volkswagen Motorsport has continued tinkering with its WRCbased Polo for a second term in World RX, but Mattias Ekstrom has received increased input from Audi Sport. The driver has ditched his DTM commitments to focus solely on rallycross and the new EKS S1 Supercar created as a collaboration between the two parties. It also has a new driver in Andreas Bakkerud, who has six World RX victories to his name and scored several podiums in a Ford Focus RS RX last season.
And then there’s Peugeot Sport, which has taken the running of its rallycross programme away from Kenneth Hansen’s team to be the first full factory effort in World RX. The French outfit will start with a pair of new cars similar to the 2017 versions, but will implement step changes through the opening part of the year. By mid-season, the Parisians also expect to be challenging at the front, and have the right drivers with which to do so. It has rally legend Sebastien Loeb, who will be sharper than ever thanks to recent seat time in the WRC, and rallycross’ most under-rated talent, Timmy Hansen. His younger brother Kevin will drive a third 2017-spec car.
However, if the old existing guard have any thoughts that they only have to watch out for each other this season, they’re going to be mistaken.
Marcus Gronholm’s GRX team has followed a similar route to that of Volkswagen by adapting an EX-WRC car (circa 2016) for World RX, the Finn’s team set to field Hyundai i20s for his son Niclas and triple European Champion Timur Timerzyanov.
The Hyundais are the only cars not to be seen so far in pre-season testing and are an unknown, but the team led by Gronholm and team manager Jussi Pinomaki has been working hard behind the scenes.
Doing away with the 1.6-litre WRC engine, the i20s are now home to what is widely acknowledged to be the best customer engine in the sport, courtesy of Pipo.
Gronholm Jr has shown flashes of pace in his maiden two campaigns, while Timerzyanov was a match for any driver before World RX began. If the Hyundai is competitive and Timerzyanov can rekindle the kind of performances that allowed him to dominate Euro RX events, he could be the dark horse for wins this season.
Also new on the block is the GC Kompetition squad with its Prodrivebuilt Renault Megane RS RXS ( see feature, page 34). While the cars are a mouth-watering creation and impressed with testing pace at Silverstone last month, team owner and driver Guerlain Chicherit openly admits he needs more experience to be able to challenge the sharp end regularly. He is also racing in the French Rallycross Championship to gain that mileage, while team-mate Jerome GrossetJanin has proved he has what it takes to challenge for titles in Euro RX but embarks on a maiden World Championship campaign this year against some of the very best in drivers in the world.
Making a return to the series after a year of absence as a full-time entry, Olsbergs MSE has revised its Ford Fiesta platform to use an inboard suspension and front-mounted radiator, similar to VW’S Polo. The squad will also field a pair of former event winners: Kevin Eriksson (son of team owner Andreas) and Robin Larsson.
Manfred Stohl’s STARD team and Sebastien Loeb Racing will also run cars for Janis Baumanis and Gregoire Demoustier in individual efforts this term.
Adding to the list of unknowns in the teams and two new venues at Silverstone and Circuit of the Americas, a number of changes to the technical and sporting regulations designed to both bring costs down and even out performance have been implemented and changes to the number of tyres available per event and items such as gear ratios and rear aerodynamic devises being fixed before the season.
The variables in World RX could be huge this season.
If those are reflected by on-track performances, 2018 could be more spectacular than ever. ■