This weekend sees the 2017 World RX of Belgium take place at the Mettet Circuit with the event being the fourth round of the 2017 FIA World Rallycross Championship.
With the Q1 Grid Draw having taken place, there are some interesting lineup’s in the first five races of the day. The lineup’s can be found here.
Francois Duval in the Albatec Racing Peugeot 208 WRX in Belgium. Credit: Albatec Racing
Race One sees Michael de Keersmaecker on pole with competition from Francois Duval in the Albatec Racing Peugeot, Ken Block in the first of the Hoonigan Racing Ford Focus Supercars and Guerlain Chicherit in his Renault Clio.
Race Two has DA Racing‘s Gregoire Demoustier on pole position in a very competitive race. Alongside the Belgian are the EKSRX run Audi Supercars of Mattias Ekstrom and Topi Heikkinen. STARD Racing‘s Janis Baumanis will be looking for a better start to his weekend whilst Reinis Nitiss lines up the third Audi in the same race as his team-mates.
Martin Kaczmarski returns for his third World RX appearence in 2017. Credit: Jakub Nitka
The third race has Johan Kristoffersson on pole in his PSRX Volkswagen Team Sweden Polo GTi alongside World RX Wildcard regular Martin Kaczmarski. Kevin Eriksson is in the same race in the first of the MJP Racing Team Austria Ford Fiesta’s whilst FIA European Rallycross Championship contender Tamas Karai lines up in his Audi S1 with “Csucsu” completing the grid in the Gigi Galli run Kia Rio.
Sebastien Loeb has pole for race four and the Team Peugeot-Hansen driver will be looking for a repeat of his podium in the event 12 months ago. The Frenchman is joined by a talented group of drivers including team-mate Timmy Hansen in the second Peugeot and Niclas Gronholm. Timo Scheider and Jean-Baptiste Dubourg complete the grid.
Kevin Hansen has a tough Q1 race on Saturday. Credit: Paulo Maria /DPPI
Race Five will surely be one to watch. Kevin Hansen lines up on pole and will be looking for a repeat of his 2016 Euro RX win. But he faces stiff competition from Petter Solberg, Andreas Bakkerud, Guy Wilks in the LOCO Energy World RX 2016 VW Polo and Timur Timerzyanov who is looking faster in each event. Expect this one to be a thriller.
To add further spice to the build up to this weekends action, it was Solberg who went fastest in Free Practice this evening. The Norwegian driver set the fastest time of 39.341 seconds with Ekstrom in second place only 55 hundredths of a second behind him.
Timmy Hansen, Timerzyanov and Eriksson completed the top five whilst the top twelve cars were covered by just over a second. The full times can be found here.
Dan Rooke has already gone quickest in Free Practice for the RX2 International Series round at Belgium. Credit: RX2 International Series
This weekend not only sees action from World RX but also the 2017 FIA European Rallycross Championship for Super1600, 2017 FIA European Rallycross Championship for Touring Cars and the first round of the RX2 International Series. 2016 British RX Champion Dan Rooke stole the headlines by going fastest in Free Practice.
