The GRX Taneco team continues with their third consecutive season in the FIA World Rallycross Championship this year, fielding two Hyundai i20 cars for Niclas Grönholm and Timur Timerzyanov with a third car shared by wildcard drivers.
Grönholm, the son of the double World Rally champion Marcus Grönholm, was a championship contender last season until he was forced to stay out from two events due to having surgery.
The Finn entered the RallyX Nordic’s All-Star ‘Magic Weekend’ earlier this year to test the car in preparation for this season, where he posted some quick lap times throughout the weekend.
But for this weekend the pace wasn’t really there, he set some quick lap times in the Saturday’s three qualifying races but fell down in the order when the faster drivers went out, Grönholm managed to place himself in the final but as the rain fell, he stalled on the start-grid – similar to what happened at the RallyX Nordic in the rain.
On Sunday, the bad luck continued as in all the three qualifying sessions and in the semi-final Grönholm faced Timo Scheider. The German managed to out run Grönholm in the opening laps of each race which lead to Grönholm losingt time as he was held off from making a pass causing Grönholm to miss out on progressing any further from the semi-final.
“We just couldn’t get the starts right, even though I had a decent reaction time and that impacted the overall result on track. It’s not clear yet, why it was like this, but we have just a few days to sort it out before the next round. Above all that we were just unlucky at times.” Grönholm said.
“We have made a step forward with the car overnight and it feels much better than yesterday, but there are still some things I would like to work on. Next week we will race in Finland and I want to perform there, as that will be my home race,”
“First race weekend of the season always brings a lot of unknowns and many challenges. You never know where you stand in terms of pace or what your competitors have done during the off-season. With two races, this weekend was even more difficult, as you have no time or resources to make big changes to the car. And even now there is not a lot of time before the next race, and we need to act fast, because midfield result is not what we came here for. We want to fight for the win and we’ll do everything that’s possible to regain our position at the top,” Jussi Pinomäki, Team Principal of GRX Taneco added.
