World Rallycross Report: Holjes

Hal ridge watched the vwm an extend his championship lead

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s oldest son of 14-time European Rallycross champion Kenneth, Timmy Hansen has spent much of his 26-year life attending the Swedish round of rallycross’ highest level.

In 2015, he saw a golden opportunity to make childhood dreams come true, diving up the inside of race leader Mattias Ekstrom in the very last corner of the final at Holjes. He pushed Ekstrom’s Audi S1 wide with his Peugeot 208 to claim victory on track, only to be handed a penalty demoting him to runner up slot as Ekstrom took a second World RX win.

Move forward three years and Hansen arrived at Holjes still talking about the feeling of crossing the finish line first at home. Through the early part of the current campaign, Hansen had arguably been the closest challenger to runaway points-leader Johan Kristoffersson, but in the opening five rounds didn’t have a trouble-free event to his name. For his home round, Peugeot Sport introduced a new evolution of its 208 WRX, including changes to chassis, suspension, engine and transmission.

Given the competitive pace of its first 2018-spec car, a new machine was always going to be a risk for the French outfit in its first campaign running the RX operation in-house but, on its debut, the car showed decent potential. So much so that come the final, Hansen started on the second row of the grid, took his joker on lap one and set about hunting down the race leaders.

As has become the norm over the last 12 months, the race leader when Hansen took his lap-one joker was Kristoffersson. Only once did the reigning champion not top the order in qualifying, beaten by team-mate Petter Solberg in Q3 and he started from pole for the final following a commanding drive in semi-final 1. Fending off the attentions of Andreas Bakkerud in the run to Turn 1 in the final, Kristoffersson never looked back, leading Bakkerud and Kevin Hansen (driving the older-spec 208 WRX) on the opening lap.

Timmy Hansen had been followed into the joker by Mattias Ekstrom and Jerome Grosset-janin, who all climbed a position when Kevin Hansen retired on lap two. Ekstrom pressured Timmy Hansen hard while the Peugeot driver closed in on Bakkerud ahead.

Kristoffersson and Bakkerud waited until the final tour to take their jokers, Hansen had done enough to move to second, as Bakkerud eased himself into the gap between Hansen and EKS team owner Ekstrom.

Into the right-hander before the cambered left for the velodrome section, Ekstrom nudged the rear of his colleague, who in turn was pushed into Hansen. In a near-replica move to the one he pulled on the same driver at the same corner in 2013 to claim his maiden Supercar win, Bakkerud forced Hansen wide and passed the Swede on the run down the hill, towards the end of the lap.

Sensing an opportunity to make it a double Audi podium, Ekstrom also went for a move to pass Hansen at the right-hander before the circuit’s jump, the front-left wheel of his S1 making heavy contact with the right-rear of Hansen’s 208, sending Ekstrom’s car into the air and sideways across the road, as Hansen careered off the circuit.

As the fireworks were let off for Kristoffersson crossing the finish line first to take another maximum score and extend his lead to 40 points ahead of Bakkerud, who was second at Holjes, Ekstrom made it across the line third followed by Grosset-janin.

But, just like in 2015, it was in the stewards’ rooms where the final result would ultimately be decided. Ekstrom was demoted to sixth for the contact, and also reprimanded for repeatedly pushing Bakkerud earlier in the lap.

The Swedish pair had come together again, but this time the party that came off worst, Hansen in this instance, didn’t benefit hugely from Ekstrom’s penalty. The Peugeot driver also then received his own reprimand for delivering a piece of his mind to Ekstrom behind the podium after the race, for ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’.

All that promoted Grosset-janin, who had qualified 10th at the Intermediate stage, into third, the first podium for GC Kompetition’s Prodrive-built Renault Megane RS RX and the first top-three finish for the young squad.

Solberg didn’t make the final, he retired from semi-final two while leading, his Volkswagen Motorsport- built Polo Supercar coming to an abrupt halt on the fourth lap. His former World Rally Championship rival Sebastien Loeb also failed to make the final cut and so dropped from second to fourth in the championship standings. The battle for ‘best of the rest’ behind the relentlessly precise and impressive Kristoffersson sits between Bakkerud, Solberg, Loeb, Hansen and Ekstrom who are covered by just 11 points as WRX heads into the second half of the season.

In Sweden, Marcus Gronholm’s GRX Taneco team was again the best behind the factory cars on pace, with its WRCderived Hyundai i20 Supercars. But both Niclas Gronholm and Timur Timerzyanov suffered punctures in the semi-finals and so failed to make the final.

British driver Oliver Bennett set a best time of 13th in Q4 with his Mini Cooper and wound up 15th overall, two places ahead of Timo Scheider who endured engine problems on his WRX return.