Johan Kristoffersson was happy to be back on the top step last weekend at Silverstone as the FIA World Rallycross Championship headed to British shores for Round 4.
It was another Saturday of struggles for the reigning champion as he took fourth and sixth in Q1 and Q2, speaking after the weekend the Swede joked, “I don’t know what it is about me and Saturdays this season; it looks like I’m becoming much more of a Sunday person. But I don’t mind this – the final is on Sunday!”
On paper, Sunday was clean sweep, but it wasn’t as simple as it seems, after recording two fastest times in Q3 and Q4 for an overall position of third place to head in to the semi-finals, Kristoffersson revealed they had some technical problems.
“Even before the start of the semi-final I had a problem with the radio in the car. I couldn’t hear the spotter, we found a way to fix this, but it was a little bit of a stress. And then we got to the first corner, I didn’t make such a good start, I touched with Petter and then I was straight to the barrier. For sure, this was not the plan!”
Kristoffersson was lucky that the accident caused the barriers to be strewn across the circuit, forcing a restart.
“For the re-started race, everything was OK. I was a bit nervous for the car, but it was working well. There was a little bit of work to do before the final, but I have the best team in the world to do this work – they were fantastic. I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t feel like I had the perfect pace in the first half of the race and Andreas [Bakkerud] was right with me. In some places it was so slippery, I just had to be really precise and careful.
“For the second half, I said to myself: “OK, just put these laps together…” I did that and it worked. I did the joker on the final lap and it was perfect.
The final was a more straight forward affair, even a lightning start from Mattias Ekström wasn’t enough to challenge in to the first corner, a lights to flag victory saw Kristoffersson back on the top step.
“You can imagine, now I’m happy. It was a super-stressful hour, but we took the win and some good points for PSRX Volkswagen Sweden and that’s all that matters.”
Credit: PSRX Volkswagen Sweden
