Getting out of a car must have been a fairly strange experience for Johan Kristoffersson last season; for the first time in ages, he wasn’t going directly from the driver’s seat to the roof.
That’s what happens when you win 11 from 12 rounds of the 2018 World Rallycross rounds. And when Kristoffersson left the PSRX Volkswagen Sweden Polo R Supercar, little did he know he wouldn’t be back behind the wheel of a rallycross machine for more than a year.
Volkswagen Motorsport’s departure from World Rallycross meant there would be no 2018 title defence. And no rallycross action for man who’d offered new meaning to the definition of a dominant season.
Until now.
Kristoffersson is hoping to start this year’s World RX season at the wheel of his own KMS-run Volkswagen Polo Supercar.
“We have a customer who we’re likely to be working with on the European [Rallycross] rounds,” Kristoffersson told DirtFish, “and I’m looking into the potential for me to drive the car on some events. Obviously I would love to do Höljes (World RX of Sweden) but that’s a European round and the same with Norway and Lohéac.
“Barcelona and Montalegre (World RX of Portugal) are both good, we will see – they’re both very nice and, for sure, it would be good to be at the first race of the season. We have some time to work on the car before then, we are doing some development with the car and we’ll be testing before Easter.”
Kristoffersson, who drove for Sébastien Loeb Racing in last year’s World Touring Car Cup, admitted he’d missed rallycross.
“I learned so much on those years in 2017 and 2018,” he said. “When you are busy you are always thinking to the next event, the next race. But over the winter, when there was no so much going on, I was thinking to the RX in those years and I really missed the PSRX team.
“The team was so nice, we had such a good time. Obviously we were quite successful, but the competition was great and I missed Petter [Solberg] – he taught me so much.”
Asked if he thought he would be capable of a winning return in his own car, Kristoffersson replied: “World RX is in a different place now, but still so much is about getting a good launch and then being in the right place at the right time.”
Kristoffersson’s only outings so far this season have been in his Volkswagen Polo R5, with Rally Sweden earlier this month netting the 31-year-old a third successive class podium at rallying’s highest level.
