South East Scoobies - World Rallycross Championship R1 2017

I popped over to Spain for the opening round of the World Rallycross Championship and, as I think a few of you on here follow the Championship, I thought I’d post a few pictures up!

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Petter Solberg now has works backing from VW Motorsport. It was pretty interesting to look around his new Polo, as the car massively deviates from the current design convention in rallycross.

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Johan Kristoffersson is Solberg’s new team mate and he looked very fast in Spain.

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After setting fastest time in practise, Kristoffersson was strong throughout the qualifying races, he won his semi-final and placed on the front row for the final. Unfortunately a stall off the line in the final ended his hopes of a win!

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Heavy rain at the end of day one made conditions very difficult for the last races to run: was pretty impressive watching the drivers wrestle with the cars in the wet though!

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Anton Marklund dominated the European Championship races on day 2. With many of the Championship favourites failing to make it past the semi-final stage Anton went on to take a comfortable victory in the Euro finals.

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Timo Scheider was one of the real surprises of the weekend: no one expected him to be slow, but he had enough pace to challenge all the World Championship favourites.

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It was a good weekend for Guy Wilks and great to see him qualify for the semi-finals. Hopefully we’ll see a Brit on the World Championship podium at some point this year!

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The Irish contingent also performed well, with Derek Tohill and Ollie O’Donovan both making the Euro finals. Tohill went on to finish fifth and Ollie third: the first time an Irish man has claimed a European Rallycross podium!

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Andreas Bakkerud had an awful start to the weekend, but bounced back in day two. He eventually finished third overall…

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…but it was Mattias Ekstrom and Timo Scheider out front in the final, a battle that Ekstrom eventually won.

It was a brilliant weekend and a great start to the World and European Championships. Can’t wait to see more of both later in the year!