HANSEN BREAKS HIS 2022 VICTORY DUCK, KRISTOFFERSSON LIFTS THE BIGGEST PRIZE
Johan Kristoffersson wrapping up his fifth World Rallycross Championship crown was almost a foregone conclusion heading into the penultimate event of the 2022 campaign at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain.
Following a controversial opening round of the double-header on Saturday, he dominated the ninth round on Sunday to stamp his authority on the series and seal his latest title success in style.
Aware that he needed to stay out of trouble and avoid penalties to ensure his crown, Kristoffersson stopped the clock first in the opening SuperPole session of the weekend on Saturday, before driving to the best times in both of the heats to top the Ranking order.
In the Progression session, the Kristoffersson Motorsport Volkswagen driver made a poor start, lost out to 2021 title-rival Timmy Hansen on the exit of the opening turn and was forced to fight back. The series leader regained track position after the joker laps had been taken, but Hansen got a run on Kristoffersson out of the extra-distance route. Carrying extra momentum up the hill, the Peugeot driver tried an outside move around the long Turn 8 left-hander and, rather than losing traction, held on to have the inside line into Turn 9.
It was there were the two World RX title winners came together, Hansen forced into the tyre wall on the inside while Kristoffersson was sent into a spin. The pair finished first and second, with Hansen ahead, but he was handed a controversial three-second penalty post-race to swap the positions.
Kevin Hansen, meanwhile, had finished second in the Ranking classification, ahead of Timmy.
While both drivers made it through to the final, it was Kevin who got the second-place grid slot next to polestarter Kristoffersson.
In the run to Turn 1 of the final, the Hansen pair moved across on Kristoffersson, Kevin Hansen getting rotated around the nose of Kristoffersson’s Volkswagen. The pair fired off into the gravel trap on the outside while Niclas Gronholm, Timmy Hansen and Gustav Bergstrom dived through on the inside to take track position.
The elder Hansen brother, Timmy, took his joker early on and pushed hard in a bid to close the gap to race leader Gronholm. When the Finn finally took his extra-route on the final tour, Hansen had done enough to get ahead and drive to his first win of the series’ new-look electric era.
Gronholm was second while Bergstrom flew the flag for KMS in third to maintain the squad’s 100% podium record in 2022. His illustrious team-mate Kristoffersson had initially finished fourth, but was dropped to fifth by a postrace penalty for his part in pushing Kevin Hansen off the circuit at the opening corner, Kristoffersson getting penalised for remaining on 100% throttle.
Needing only to participate to be sure of his fifth World crown on Sunday, Kristoffersson threw caution to the wind. Almost an entire second faster than nearest rival Timmy Hansen in SuperPole, Kristoffersson dominated the day, the only blot on his copybook on the road to starting on pole position for the final was in heat two, was when he jokered early in his race and lost a marginal amount of time behind yet-tojoker team-mate Ole Christian Veiby.
That proved incidental however as the Swede still drove to the best overall time. Having secured pole for the final, and clearly increasingly comfortable in the refined set-up of KMS’s RX1e machine, Kristoffersson delivered the kind of dominant performance reserved for the very greatest in their field and pulled his winning margin over
Timmy Hansen to over five seconds come the end of the race.
Hansen had a strong run to second to deliver a solid weekend on the back of a tough set of previous rounds while Veiby returned to the podium following a disaster for the Norwegian on Saturday, when his car’s entire battery package had to be changed forcing him to miss both heats.
CE Dealer Team stable-mates Klara
Andersson and Niclas Gronholm completed the list of final finishers, Andersson improved throughout the weekend in her first visit to the Catalan venue while Gronholm had been passed by Andersson in the pair’s semi-final when he picked up a power steering issue, which then reared its head again in the final and it dropped him to fifth.
Kevin Hansen had a difficult second day, summarised by starting on the outside of the grid in the semi-finals, getting pitched into a half-spin in the opening corner and although saving the moment, finishing outside of the final qualifying places.
The net outcome, aside from Kristoffersson’s crown and the KMS team lifting the teams’ title, was that Timmy Hansen also moved clear of the fierce battle for runner-up position in the championship, but Gronholm, Veiby and Kevin Hansen remain locked in a close fight for third overall ahead of the final round at the Nurburgring next week.