KRIS T OFFERS SON AVOID S PIT FALLS FOR ANOTHER WIN
Hal ridge saw the champion miss the chaos in norway
The Lankebanen circuit cut into the hillside above the village of Hell has got Petter Solberg written all over it, and not just because it’s the home round of the World Rallycross Championship for Norway’s most decorated motorsport star.
The undulations, daunting kerbs and high commitment gravel corners provide the kind of environment that should suit the triple FIA world champion down to the ground, but fortune has never favoured the Volkswagen driver in his homeland.
To an extent, that formbook changed at the fifth round of the series last weekend as Solber battled his way to a podium finish in third. But, he could do nothing to stop PSRX Volkswagen Sweden team-mate Johan Kristoffersson from producing the most dominant performance of his rallycross career so far to win his fourth event of the year and move into an increasingly commanding championship lead.
Following a successful test in Sweden in the week leading into the Norwegian round, Kristoffersson claimed to finally be comfortable in Volkswagen Motorsport’s Polo R Supercar, quite a statement for a driver who had seen the chequered flag first in threequarters of the 2018 events prior to the Norwegian stop-off.
Fastest from the opening free practice session on Friday evening, held in damp conditions, Kristoffersson overcame starting from fourth on the grid in his first qualifying race to take the lead at Turn 1. From that point on, the Swede didn’t see another car’s rear bumper for the rest of the weekend.
Fortune was on Kristoffersson’s side too. Contact to the rear of his Polo Supercar at Turn 1 in Q1 pushed bodywork onto his rear tyre. On another occasion that may have punctured the rubber, but it didn’t. Likewise, in the final when Peugeot driver Timmy Hansen was spun across the front of Andreas Bakkerud’s Audi S1 and over the vicious first corner kerbs, the 208 Supercar missed the rear of Kristoffersson’s machine. The same scenario on another day could have spelt trouble for the reigning champion, but it didn’t.
What wasn’t luck though was the way in which Kristoffersson won the final. Having made it into the semi-finals by the skin of his teeth, a five-second penalty for pushing Solberg at the joker lap entry in Q3 followed by a technical problem that didn’t allow him to leave the start line in Q4, Mattias Ekstrom lined up on the second row in the final. He took his joker on the first lap, and with Timmy Hansen and Bakkerud out of the equation, set about hunting down Kristoffersson and Solberg up front.
The Swede matched Kristoffersson for pace until the end of lap four, when the race leader pulled out a few tenths’ buffer so that when he took his own joker on the final tour, he was able to remain in the lead. A lap earlier, Ekstrom’s pace had allowed him to pass Solberg for second, at the venue where his EKS team made it’s World RX debut in 2014, but he could do little about Kristoffersson.
Former MSA Junior Rallycross champion Kevin Hansen equalled his personal-best World RX result in fourth and finished ahead of his older brother Timmy, who had to fight back from the Turn 1 incident where contact with first Ekstrom and then Bakkerud sent his Peugeot into a spin, which ended with a stalled engine and Bakkerud’s Audi stuck into the side of his car.
When Hansen finally got going, even with a slow puncture from the incident, he was able match Kristoffersson’s lap times, but for the fifth time in as many races he was arguably the least lucky driver in the event. Bakkerud finished sixth.
The only man other than Kristoffersson to win a round so far this season, Sebastien Loeb, failed to make the final after his spotter neglected to tell the Frenchman to take his joker in Q3, dropping him to the foot of the session’s standings. He could only manage fourth in semifinal one, while Niclas Gronholm again impressed in his father Marcus’ GRX team and finished fourth in semi-final two.
Alex Wurz followed in his tripleEuropean Rallycross champion father Franz’s footsteps by making his rallycross debut in the MJP Racing Team Austria Ford Fiesta Supercar that Andrew Jordan had raced at Silverstone two weeks earlier, but struggled to get on top of the car on the loose surfaces on the opening day, in part due to only having completed 12 miles of testing preevent. He improved throughout and will make a further appearance with the team later in the campaign.
The headlines were again reserved for Kristoffersson, however. In his maiden world title winning season last year, the successful circuit-racer rewrote the World RX history books, claiming seven wins and 10 podiums. With seven rounds still to run of the 2018 campaign, those history books could be set for another refresh and the next round takes place at the Swede’s favourite venue, Holjes.