The World Rally Championship’s most charismatic champion, Petter Solberg, was beginning his second successive title defense.
His old WRC adversary Sébastien Loeb had entered the frame, Matias Ekström was committing to the full season and Ken Block brought the fanfare, and a state-of-the-art new car, with his Hoonigan Racing Division.
Rallycross was in a fantastic place 10 years ago. Now? Err… next question, please.
But tweaks to the regulations, chiefly ditching EV in favor of ICE, appear to have unlocked the opportunity for the discipline to regain its former glory.
World championship status has been lost, the big names have largely dissipated, but for arguably the first time this decade it feels like there’s proper momentum behind the championship again.
DirtFish spoke to two of 2026’s biggest names, Johan Kristoffersson and Andreas Bakkerud, for their read on rallycross’ new direction and its health in the future.
What went wrong?
World RX's final season (for now) was 2025
But first, let’s consider how the discipline lost traction in the motorsport landscape.
Manufacturer interest boomed in the mid 2010s, with Volkswagen (supporting Solberg’s PSRX outfit), Audi (supporting Ekström’s EKS), Peugeot (supporting Hansen Motorsport) and Ford (supporting Hoonigan Racing Division) all involved at one stage.
The plan was for cars to pivot from internal combustion toward electrification in 2020/21, but manufacturers began pulling out ahead of the 2019 season, and the electric switch never actually happened until 2022.
That did little to boost rallycross’ popularity with waning fan interest and competition preceding the disastrous fire at Lydden Hill in 2023 where both of Special One Racing’s Lancia Delta Evo-e RX were destroyed. Investigations into that meant an enforced gap in the season before top-class RX1e rivals saw out the season in second-tier RX2e cars instead.
A ‘battle of technologies’ concept was then implemented for 2024, pitching electric cars directly against ICE variants. But grid numbers and outside engagement never flourished under the promotion of RX Promoter, with the FIA itself taking over for 2025.
Last September, world motorsport’s governing body announced that EVs would be removed from rallycross’ top championship, with the World Rallycross Championship also rested in favor of the European Rally Championship.
The response has been incredible, with 30 Supercars starting this weekend’s opening round in Riga, Latvia – the largest top-tier entry of the 2020s.
This weekend's grid is the biggest for almost a decade
‘Back to how it should be’
Now an eight-time world champion in rallycross, Kristoffersson’s status grew with the championship’s explosion of interest as he claimed back-to-back crowns with PSRX in 2017 and ’18.
The Swede will contest round one at minimum in 2026 (budget constraints restricting him from committing to the full six-round season just yet) and told DirtFish any changes that are more in-line with the late 2010s are a good thing.
“I would love it to be a world championship because I mean a world championship is always a world championship. And as I have eight, of course I would like to fight for another one,” Kristoffersson said.
“But I think this is great for rallycross. I mean at the first round we have 30 cars on the grid which is just absolutely amazing. We even now have a quarterfinal, which we haven’t had in the past, because we have so many cars.
“Also, it feels more like we’re back to the basics of rallycross with these regulations, at least more towards it. In my opinion, every step which is made that is more towards how it was in ’17 or ’18 makes rallycross better.
“That’s why, I think, KMS is still here, and that’s why I think I’m also still, you know, within rallycross, is that I still believe in rallycross. I think it’s a great sport, and I always believe that it deserves more [recognition],” Kristoffersson added.
“Even ’17, ’18, I believe that the sport deserves even more than the recognition it got back then because the sport is really a nice sport. If we can start to rebuild rallycross back to what it was and then learn from the mistakes that potentially was made after ’17-’18 and try again to build rallycross strong again, I will really enjoy to be a part of that journey. I would love to see rallycross back and very strong.”
Bakkerud has never won a world title in rallycross (despite tying on points with Timmy Hansen in 2019) and continues to chase that dream, but he’s one of the discipline’s most prolific profiles.
He feels the step to electric wasn’t necessarily the wrong one, but credited the FIA with its swift action to reawaken interest.
“Rallycross has been unlucky in so many ways,” said Bakkerud. “We were a bit late going over to electric when the electric thing happened, then there was the Covid strike when rallycross was finally about to spark up again, then the Lancias of Loeb and Chicerot went on fire at Lydden, so it’s got a lot of hits and then the RX promoter I felt did a very weak job with the sport and I was never a fan of rallying owning rallycross. Not to blame anyone, but I wasn’t a big fan of that.
“So I think the FIA now has done a very good job with what they have and for not much investment. I think they’re doing a very decent job getting drivers, getting teams, sorting out stuff for us. So we’re into a very exciting few years and the next few years will be the end of this era of cars, then we set on to the rally rules in the future [in 2028] which I also think is the right way to go because the current cars are so expensive to build and maintain. But it’s going to be great for the fans to see them the next few years in action.”
Bakkerud had been worried that rallycross had lost fans, but renewed interest in 2026 has caused him to change his view.
“I think we have reset the sport a bit. We have listened to the fans. We have gone over to ICE cars. And really… for a period now, it feels like the fans have disappeared. But in recent months, it feels like, well, they never left. They’re there, but they’ve just been waiting for a chance or a change,” the Norwegian explaiend.
“And that’s what I feel we see today. I mean, our views are back on social media, our likes are back, comments, interactions, all that. So, yeah, it’s really a rollercoaster. It’s been wild the last few months [but] he traffic, the questions and the hunger is back with our fans. I really like it.”
Is rallycross about to boom again?
All the ingredients appear to be in place for rallycross' popularity to explode again
“That’s the feeling,” Bakkerud replied, “but at the same time, how many times can you use that phrase?”
He’s right to exercise that caution as a competitive wheel has not yet turned in this new era, but the signs are incredibly strong.
Hype is building, the format is far more familiar, the grid is booming and every single session will be available to watch for free on YouTube.
All Kristoffersson fears is missing are the big names.
“Rallycross, I think, is very short and tense. It’s a lot of action, and it’s a bit like watching the powerstage of the rally,” he said. “I think people have to give it a go.
“But what I do think, and what I do believe is, that rallycross still needs those really big names. Like if you look at rally, unfortunately for rally as well, there has been some big drops the last couple of years with Kalle [Rovanperä] dropping out and a few others. But I mean, they still have [Sébastien] Ogier, they still have [Elfyn] Evans, they still have some really media-strong names.
“We had we had some really, really good drivers, of course, [in the past], but there were also a lot of other good drivers that could beat those big names. They were names within the social media and had a big fan base, which created a lot of fuss around rallycross. And then what we had was those really, really good established drivers be up against those who saw them as their heroes and beat them.
“So I think that’s what we need for rallycross to build it back to be really, really strong again.”
Bakkerud believes rallycross’ short-form nature gives it the potential to be extremely popular, describing the discipline as “the MMA of motorsport”.
He said: “I just want rallycross to be a prioritized sport which has good economics to it and a good, stable platform. It is a perfect platform in motorsport to have electric cars, because it’s just such a sprint race and stadium sport, and we can bring it to the cities and stuff like that. But that never happened.
“So I think still you could have had electric rallycross cars, but the format needs to be a bit different where you bring it to downtown London, New York… all of the stuff that Formula E is doing. Because the value is great.
“OK, I’m a bit biased here, but I don’t see why rallycross isn’t the most popular motorsport at times. Because if it’s a boring heat, just wait five minutes, you have a thrilling heat. Especially this year, you’re going to have six heats in Riga with Supercars. Not everyone is capable of winning, but half of the field could be challenging.
“Even though I see KMS and ourselves up in the top spots fighting, there is rubbing into Turn 1 and all of a sudden you don’t reach the semis. So anyone could really win.
“I see rallycross as MMA in motorsport. You have a mix of everything. Drag race out the box, door-to-door racing, Tarmac racing, dirt, jumps, rallying. You have everything there. And I really also think these cars fits really well for let’s say a Formula 1 driver or a rally driver who would like to test it out. They can very quickly adapt to the sport and be quick.
“It’s hard to put a finger on it, but I really think if it gets the right traction now, we have the potential of doing great. I think it’s going to be a very, very exciting year for rallycross.”
