31-year-old Dutch rally star Kevin Abbring will compete in a full-season campaign with the French GC Kompetition team in the FIA European Rallycross Championship, driving a newly developed Renault Clio R.S RX.
Abbring started his motorsport career in rallycross, claiming the 2005 and 2006 championship titles in the Dutch Ford RST series before switching over to rally.
He made debut with Hyundai WRC team in 2015 and has impressed with class wins in FIA World Rally Championship and in Intercontinental Rally Challenge.
Abbring is still the youngest ever to win an FIA Junior WRC event, in 2011 he was crowned the ‘Driver of the Year’ by FIA. The last few years he has been factory development driver for WRC and R5 cars.
After a decade in rallying, Abbring came back to the rallycross last year, making his debut in the World RX with ES Motorsport-Labas Gas team in a Škoda Fabia at the World RX of Norway. He impressed by leading the final before finishing in fourth place. Abbring repeated the same performance in Höljes where he also reached the final and finished fourth.
“I’m very pleased to work with GCK, and engineering company FORS, from 2020 onwards! GCK is not only the team with arguably the biggest potential, but it’s also a team with extremely experienced and motivated people, with whom I worked closely in the past.” Abbring commented.
“The team has invested a lot in the car and our main focus now is to bring those pieces together and find the optimum balance. I can’t wait to get our test programme going and get a first taste of the car.”
“Guerlain and GCK have been leaders in the drive to find sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions in rallycross, as well as other motorsports. For me, it is a great opportunity to work on a sustainable future with a team which has a strong focus on future motorsport developments.“
“It also offers me the opportunity to fight for a championship again and that’s my key focus! I have a lot of respect for Guerlain and the team and I am proud to be part of GCK,” Abbring added.
“I’m super stoked to have Kevin represent GCK in European Rallycross. Kevin has enormous talent and is super committed to the sport. I look forward to working closely with him and supporting him through our pre-season testing and the season to push for the Championship title,” Guerlain Chicherit said.
