The rallycross season kicked off this Thursday morning with the All-Star ‘Magic Weekend’, and the Flying Finns have dominated in both classes on the first qualification of the day.
Robin Larsson took an early lead on the first-ever Supercar heat race of the season and he held on to that until the finish line, posted the fastest time, and already showed that despite the disruption from Coronavirus has lost none of his pace from last season.
The day started badly for Oliver Solberg as he suffered a broken transmission on the Free Practice 2, but the team managed to get the car fixed in-time for Q1 where he had a great battle with Johan Kristoffersson.
Kristoffersson ran wide at turn one but even being away from rallycross for around 18 months, held on tight to win his race, and also beat Larsson’s time with a small margin.
In the third race, Supercar debutant Ben-Philip Gundersen took the holeshot in turn one. Being first-time out with the Audi S1 EKS RX on a competitive level, he held on his lead to the finish but was slower than the top-level drivers.
All eyes were on Niclas Grönholm in the last race, the Finnish World RX driver with his 2020-spec Hyundai i20. He dueled with the Supercar debutant Fraser McConnell in to turn one where McConnell decided to take the joker and released Grönholm to take the lead.
Grönholm held on to his lead and took a clean joker lap to win the Q1 session, beating Kristoffersson by a tenth of a second, but speaking afterward with Neil Cole, Grönholm wasn’t pleased with his performance and is keen to get more out of himself in the next couple of races of the day.
In the Supercar Lites, it was the Kouvola round winner and RX2 regular Jesse Kallio who won the first session.
