Timmy Hansen kept up his family team’s unbeaten start to the World Rallycross season, leading home brother Kevin at Höljes as three-time world champion Johan Kristoffersson failed to make the final.
Kristoffersson, who finished second in qualifying to Timmy Hansen, pulled off during his semifinal after sustaining a puncture, marking the first time he’s failed to make a World RX main event since Germany 2017.
The semifinal wins were shared between Timmy and Kevin Hansen, ensuring they locked out the front row of the grid for the final. That allowed the sibling duo to control the start, holding off a charge from a rapid Kevin Abbring, who opted for the joker on the first lap in a bid to overhaul the Peugeot duo.
That didn’t work for the former World Rally Championship man Abbring, however, who got stuck behind Krisztián Szabó who saved his longer route until the final lap.
As a result Timmy and Kevin Hansen were able to make a gap on the rest of the field, and by the time they both jokered on the final lap, Abbring was a huge 4.7 seconds off the lead.
Abbring and Enzo Ide, who also opted for the joker on lap one, were both able to overhaul Szabó on that final lap to settle in third and fourth respectively, but the Hansens were untouchable up front.
Szabó, who benefited from Kristofferson’s failure to take second in semifinal 2, eventually finished fourth, with Juha Rytkönen rounding out the final finishers. Rytkönen’s appearance in the final came at the expense of Niclas Grönholm who finished second on the road in the first semi but was handed a five-second penalty for striking a track marker, despite the contact coming as a result of being forced wide by Peter Hedström.
In the overall championship, Timmy Hansen’s win moves him up a spot to the lead, six points ahead of Kevin Hensen, while Szabó moves up a spot to third.
Abbring’s strong weekend, which also included a qualifying round win, moves him up from seventh to fourth, while Kristoffersson’s failure to make the final has resulted in a slip from third to fifth. Despite also missing out of the final, Grönholm jumps up two places to sixth,
The second RX2e event was won by Jesse Kallio who capitalized on a great start to dominate.
He passed polesitter Fraser McConnell around the outside of turn 1, then remained unchallenged for the remainder of the six-lap final.
McConnell, who shared qualifying and semifinal wins with Kallio, faced early pressure from Patrick O’Donnovan, but a slow joker and him subsequently losing a wheel dropped Britain’s O’Donnovan out of contention.
That allowed Isak Sjökvist to take third, ahead of round-one winner Guillaume De Ridder. Linus Östlund was fifth, while the three-wheeled O’Donnovan was able to finish, albeit in sixth.
Despite struggling to match the top pace all weekend, De Ridder retains the championship lead, with Kallio moving up to second, a single point back. McConnell meanwhile drops from second to third, but is just two points off the lead.
In European RX1, Thomas Bryntesson won from Jean-Baptiste Dubourg and Andreas Bakkerud.
Volkswagen driver Bryntesson made a good start to avoid the typical start skirmish into turns 1 and 2, then resisted pressure from Dubourg throughout the duration of the six-lap final to win.
Bakkerud, competing in the Euro RX1 season opener after being frozen out of World RX, was forced wide at the start, necessitating an early joker. And while he was able to string together a sequence of fast laps, he couldn’t overhaul the lead pair who took the longer route on the final two laps.
‘CsuCsu’ took fourth after a last-lap pass on Tamás Kárai, while Jonathan Pailler took sixth. Pailler had been on course for a fourth-place finish until he was forced off-track as a result of contact with ‘CsuCsu’ on the joker merge. ‘CsuCsu’ was however placed sixth in the official results, moving Kárai and Pailler each up a slot.
It was a comprehensive final victory for Brytesson, but the story of the weekend was very nearly quite different.
Anton Marklund swept the first three qualifying sessions but rolled spectacularly out of Q4. While his strong result up to that point meant that he still finished qualifying third overall, the 2017 European champion was unable to continue due to car damage. He, however, was uninjured.
The second round of Euro RX3 went the way of Audi driver Yury Belevskiy who also won round one in Barcelona. Second was Kobe Pauwels, with Marat Knyazev third.
Jan Černý, Janno Ligur, and Damian Litwinowicz completed the final field in the front-wheel-drive class.
