KRISTOFFERSSON RULES THE GLOBE
UNEARTHS THE FINEST FINEST DETAILS FOR SECOND CROWN
So often in motorsport, the difference between success and failure can be measured by the smallest of margins but all of those small details and margins strung together can make a large void.
Having won both the drivers’ and teams’ titles in 2017, Volkswagen Motorsport’s Polo Supercar was updated for a second termwith the PSRX Volkswagen Sweden team but it didn’t have quite the march on its rivals it had previously enjoyed.
That makes Johan Kristoffersson’s extraordinary dominance in the defence of his drivers’ crown even more amazing, as time and time again the Swede did everything right to be in the right place when it mattered most, and reaped the biggest rewards. While Kristoffersson is a man obsessed with the finer details and has a memory for past situations and scenarios like no other on the grid, he got lucky more than once at the start of the campaign to build incredible momentum.
Three victories from the first four rounds could so easily have been a different story. Audi driver Mattias Ekstrom pushed Kristoffersson’s team-mate Petter Solberg into a Turn 1 wall in the season opener and Kristoffersson only inherited the win when Ekstrom was disqualified.
Ekstrom was again involved in round two, when he and team-mate Andreas Bakkerud got confused by their own tactics at Turn 1 of the semifinals, allowing Kristoffersson an open goal to win again.
Then in round four at Silverstone, Kristoffersson’s fortune was in the hands of the rallycross gods as he and Solberg came together at the start of the semis, causing enough disruption to the track furniture to force the race to be stopped. Both restarted, but it was Solberg’s car not Kristoffersson’s that was forced out with terminal damage and the champion won again.
Until that point, the title was still up for grabs, but a crushing victory in Norway two weeks after Silverstone not only extended Kristoffersson’s margin, but destroyed his rival’s hopes.
Ekstrom was even admitting, by that stage of the campaign, that in such form, beating his compatriot to the biggest trophy was going to be impossible. In his over two-decade career, the former DTM star had seen it before.
And so the year went on as did Kristoffersson’s attention for detail. He could be seen testing out the braking area off line at the first corner in free practice and his incredible composure that allows him to analyse his own driving. That means mistakes are rare and chances of making the same mistake twice almost non-existent.
While some events he dominated, rivals’ mistakes played their part in the Swede’s almost unbelievable win tally, notably in Canada, France and the USA, where Kristoffersson played it cool and netted victories to notch up another title with two rounds to spare.
Eleven top step visits from 12 is an almost perfect year, especially against a team-mate as accomplished as Solberg and rivals like Ekstrom and Sebastien Loeb in not so dissimilar machinery, but it could have been better still. Had it not been for a damp pole position grid slot in the Belgian final in May, a surface that caused Kristoffersson to make a slow start, get forced into the wall at Turn 1 and out of victory contention, he might have been looking at a World Championship sweep.
“Ahh, but the same time I was P2 on the grid in the semi-final there and I took the start from Timmy [Hansen], so I both lost and won on those grid slots,” says Kristoffersson looking back to the start of the campaign.
“OK, if there had been a little bit more of a delay between the semi-final and final then the grid slots would have been a little bit drier, I would be able to take the start and I think I would have been able to win that event as well. But that’s just one of these things that can happen. At the same time, when I was starting from P3 like in Barcelona, the margin was sometimes on my side to win instead so it’s been both ways.”
The Swede, who netted a second Swedish Touring Car Championship title a week before his second World RX crown, feels he only had a true advantage over his fellow manufacturer-backed rivals on a handful of occasions this year.
“There’s been two weekends when I felt very strong, and thought ‘OK, now they have to drive really fast if they want to beat me’,” he says. “But in some other races, like Silverstone or Canada, I wasn’t the quickest so I had to really dig deep to work out what I was missing and to find the advantage.”
The 30-year-old admits that it’s hard to believe the run he has been on in the last two years. He won seven rounds in 2017, a record he obliterated this season. “It’s nothing you can even dream of,” he says. “Yeah OK you can dream about it, but you cannot really believe that it’s going to be as many victories as it has been, especially in a sport like this. So many things can happen, there’s so many variables during a race weekend. The draw for Q1 is so important and there are so many things that can bounce in one direction or another. This season, I had the margins on my side. But looking back, it also feels like, especially after Germany [where Kristoffersson had not previously finished on the podium], I got in black and white that the work I do at home really pays off and I see what I did that really made the difference compared to some of the other competitors.
“That’s only the small things that I’m doing, then the good thing is that I always have a car that is reliable and I always feel at home when I jump in; there’s never anything new that I don’t recognise, so when the track conditions change for example I always know what to expect. The small things on track you can make a difference yourself, but it also comes down to that the team is doing a great job in the background.”
While guilty of always striving for the next goal, proven by his determination to succeed in Germany a fortnight after securing the title by starting his homework on the morning after Austin, Kristoffersson has had to work hard on living in the moment too.
“That was also one thing I did during the whole season this year,” says the title-holder. “Last year I reminded myself that you have to keep looking forward do the job for the next event, to not get lazy and take things for granted. But this season I tried already from the first race to just enjoy the sport itself; the racing and the competition from the others and enjoy every victory in the moment and not only just looking forward. Last season, of course I also enjoyed it a little bit, but not as much as this year.”
The future for rallycross’ second double world champion is dependent on factors outside his control, chiefly the decision fromvwas to whether it commits to an electric future (from 2021) and continues to back PSRX for the next two years.
If Kristoffersson goes again in similar equipment next year, anything is possible. ■