Rallycross preview part 1: the Places That Aren’t America edition
The World Rallycross Championship is starting to feel--at least at a competitiveness level--like a proper world championship. Last season again went to Petter Solberg, although in not quite the dominating fashion that he took it in 2014. Solberg was equal on wins--three--with Timmy Hansen, previous champion Olsbergs MSE in the team points title. After running a sporadic second car in 2014 and a sporadically competitive Liam Doran in 2015 (off to drive for JRM-Mini this year), Solberg--somehow--only has the funding for a single-Citroen effort in 2016.
Perhaps it’s for the best to focus the resources on one car. Peugeot-Hansen are running a four-car effort this year, splitting Hansen and Davy Jeanney up into two official teams for the team championship: Jeanney will be on Hansen Academy with Timmy Hansen’s younger brother, Kevin, while Timmy Hansen will be matched up with none other than Sebastien Loeb, whose last rallycross run resulted in an X-Games gold medal in 2012 and, after a competitive couple seasons in touring cars in addition to his incomparable expertise on dirt, has the best shot at knocking off Solberg.
Olsbergs return with a completely new driver lineup--a very young one at that, with Kevin Eriksson moving up from a 2nd place in Lites to his dad’s team, joined by another son-of-dirt: Niclas Gronholm. Timur Timerzyanov moves to Team Austria, Reinis Nitiss goes to Rene Munnich’s team as they switch from Audi to Seat, and Andreas Bakkerud--as well as Ford’s factory backing--goes to this guy:
Yep, Ford decided to take a big step with a properly factory-backed team, and hired out none other than Ken Block to head it up. The Hoonigan squad are in not Fiestas, but Focuses, a car that Block has been personally developing the high-performance variants on for much of last year. The big question, though, especially after last year’s GRC performance: can he string together a season’s worth of results to get up there with Solberg and Loeb?
Johan Kristofferson will mix it up with Volkswagen RX Sweden, a combined squad of Kristofferson and Anton Marklund. Topi Heikkinen moves over to Matthias Ekstrom and the Audis of EKS RX, and along with Robin Larsson’s Audi and the aforementioned Nitiss-Munnich Seat team, a more focused contingent from VAG should make an interesting title fight even more so.
Please meet my new best friend for 2016 season of @FIAWorldRX! @allinklracing has done a brilliant job! Love it! pic.twitter.com/Sp2a0VzcWq
Schedule-wise the series is actually backing up a bit, dropping Italy and Turkey in favor of... Latvia. Latvia! They still have their jaunts to the Americas, hitting Trois-Rivieres and returning to Rosario, Argentina for the season finale. No plans on encroaching any further on GRC turf, but if Block finally cracks that nut and takes a championship, who knows...
