Kristoffersson Gets Back To The Front

Champion was .in the wall, and then on the top of the podium

- Hal Ridge

Never take out your team-mate; an age-old mantra for any multi-car motorsport outfit. A driver’s team-mate is the first target to beat, but making contact with said target, or even worse still – taking them out of the running – is totally out of the question.

For the third time in the World Rallycross Championship’s first four rounds this season, two high-profile team-mates came together in the final stages of an event as Silverstone made its debut appearance in the series.

This time, the crash was a scenario that had huge implications to the outcome of the final, which was won by points leader Johan Kristoffersson.

The reigning champion’s PSRX Volkswagen Sweden team-mate Petter Solberg had topped the order on day one, setting the fastest time in Q1 12 months to the weekend since his most recent World RX win, at Lydden Hill. Until the Silverstone round, Kristoffersson hadn’t set a single fastest qualifying time in 2018. He rectified that statistic by being fastest in Q3 and Q4 on Sunday morning to climb to the top of the Intermediate Classification, assisted in part by Mattias Ekstrom and Solberg being stuck behind the ailing Peugeot 208 of Timmy Hansen for more than two laps in Q4, dropping the pair of former World RX champions down the Intermediate rankings.