Kristoffersson bests Ekström in round two qualifying

Championship leader edges intense fight with 2016 champion Ekström to take top qualifier spot for round two

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Johan Kristoffersson once again topped qualifying as the 2020 World Rallycross season continued at Höljes.

The Volkswagen runner, who topped qualifying before winning round one on Saturday, beat Mattias Ekström in a straight fight – the two Swedes being drawn in the same heat race for all three rounds.

Q1 went the way of Kristoffersson, who made a clean getaway to comfortably win, while in Q2 Ekström used an early joker to rattle off a stream of quick laps that allowed him to emerge ahead of Kristoffersson once the double champion had taken the longer route.

That set up a vital head-to-head between the pair in the final qualifying heat. In the race, Kristoffersson became the first driver of the weekend to dip below three minutes in his four-lap cumulative time, ensuring the TQ spot.

Ekström finished second on the road and in the times to consolidate runner up spot, while third overall went to Andreas Bakkerud who more than made up for a torrid time yesterday. The 2019 championship runner-up was never outside the top-four all morning.

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It was a different story for his RX Cartel team-mate Liam Doran who faced technical issues in all three of his heats and was unable to get off the bottom of the board for the second day running.

Ekström’s JC Raceteknik team-mate Robin Larsson was fourth, ahead of Kevin Hansen and Krisztián Szabó who once again put on a strong showing to comfortably finish the highest of the three Hyundai drivers.

Anton Marklund finished the morning seventh. Having swept his heat races on Saturday, he only managed one on-the-road win during round two qualifying. He beat Timo Scheider who took a brace of heat wins to claim eighth.

After a tough morning, championship favorites Timmy Hansen and Niclas Grönholm finished a low ninth and 10th respectively while Timur Timerzyanov and René Münnich clinched the final two transfer spots, the former despite breaking a driveshaft mid-way through his Q3 race.

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