As VW’s dual world champion Sebastien Ogier tries to win Rally Argentina for the first time this weekend (the Frenchman’s Finnish teammate, Jari-Matti Latvala, won it last year), the second World Rallycross Championship (World RX) kicks off in Portugal with VW backing two teams, both Swedish.
It supported Marklund Motorsport last year and it was runner-up in the teams championship to another Swedish team, Olsbergs MSE campaigning Ford Fiestas. Norway’s 2003 world rally champion Petter Solberg won the drivers’ title in a privateer Citroen DS3.
Now VW is also supporting Kristoffersson Motorsport, which will compete as Volkswagen Team Sweden.
There are 21 of the four-wheel-drive, turbocharged, 600-horsepower World RX Supercars entered for the opening round at Montalegre in Portugal – and 10 of the second-tier, 300-horsepower Lites.
At the end of next week a Ford Fiesta Lite from Olsbergs MSE is to be tested at Sydney Motorsport Park by Australia’s top rally driver Chris Atkinson and Aussie-based Scotsman Alister McRae, winner of last weekend’s Race to the Sky in New Zealand.
A seven-round Extreme Rallycross Championship has been announced for Australia, starting on the Gold Coast at the end of August, with other rounds in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. Separately, Australian rally legend Bob Watson is reviving rallycross at Broadford in Victoria mid-year.
The sport is enjoying a new boom, with another series called Global Rallycross, which is essentially American, running from June to November, and featuring Ken Block and Travis Pastrana, while the Andretti clan fields VW Beetles in it.
World RX is very European and Scandinavian, although the last of the 13 events on its calendar is in Argentina.
There are eight permanent World RX teams now, up from six last year, and 18 drivers are committed to the full championship.
Rallycross is a combination of rallying and circuit racing, with a compact schedule of short races that include jumps and water splashes.
VW’s two teams in the World RX remain privateers and the company’s motorsport chief Jost Capito says they have developed and will race their Polo RX Supercars independently.
Marklund’s drivers are Finn Toomas Heikkinen, runner-up to Solberg in the drivers’ championship last year, and Swedish recruit Per-Gunnar Andersson, twice the junior world rally champion.
The other VW team has Johan Kristofferson – a Swede who won Europe’s now-defunct V8 Superstars as well as the Scandinavian Touring Car and Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia titles in one year (2012) – and Norwegian Tord Linnerud, who has raced a Renault Clio in international rallycross in recent years.
“VW is represented by two extremely professional privateer teams,” Capito said.
“The line-up and the calendar promise an exciting World RX season and we are confident that the Volkswagen drivers will be there battling for race wins and the championship.”
Solberg had hoped to have a full factory team this season, but that has not eventuated. Instead, he has formed an alliance with British driver Liam Doran that will be known as SDRX and they will field their Citroen DS3s from separate workshops.
“We have made so many improvements to my car over the [northern] winter and we will be thinking of the championship from the start, but I also really want to win events [again],” Solberg said.
“The competition will be so hard this year with all the Volkswagens, Fords, Peugeots, Audis and people like [Austrian former WRC competitor] Manfred Stohl. It will be really tough.”
Audi-aligned Mattias Ekstrom, the Swede who has won the International Race of Champions three times, the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) twice and was a star of the 2013 Bathurst 1000, has committed to drive “enough [World RX] races this year to become world rallycross champion”.
Last season Ekstrom contested three World RX rounds, winning in Sweden and finishing second in Germany.
He and compatriot Anton Marklund, who has joined his EKS team from Marklund Motorsport, will drive Audi S1 Quattros and Ekstrom will continue chasing another DTM title as well.
“We [EKS] will do the full world championship. Anton and I will do as many races as we can [but there are clashes with DTM rounds early and late in the season],” Ekstrom said.
“Last year I proved that I can win in both cars [rallycross and DTM].
“I have felt I became a better qualifier in DTM after I started rallycross.
“In rallycross you have no time to start slowly and increase your pace. You have to be on the limit straight away.
“In the other direction I have learnt a lot from the option tyre in DTM. Even in only six laps in rallycross that can make a difference. The tyres can get very hot in that time.”
Another team will field Audi S3s, the Swedish-French team Peugeot-Hansen has the French make’s latest-spec 208 WRX, while Stohl will be in a Ford Fiesta for World RX Team Austria.
A Prodrive-built MINI Clubman RX will be entered at some rounds by sports-car team JRM Racing and it will rotate drivers.
JRM bought Prodrive’s MINI RX program last year. It was based on the MINI campaigned in the WRC in 2011.
In the American series Pastrana and teammate Bucky Lasek race Subaru WRX STis while IndyCar, NASCAR and sports-car team owner Chip Ganassi fields a pair of Ford Fiestas.