For 2017 the Austrian
power in the FIA World Rallycross Championship suffered not
only a slight change in the team name but also has a totally new
driver lineup for the coming season. The team is now called MJP
Racing Team Austria as Max Pucher is now the only boss of the
team, and a good pair was brought to substitute Timur Timerzyanov and
Janis Baumanis.
The deals were presented
on different days at MJP Racing Team Austria with the first driver
announced being the DTM champion Timo Scheider, with this
being a break in his sequence of apprearances with VW Group
machinery, specially with Audi.
Although most of the
recent 600 hp cars Scheider drove were GT3 cars with rear wheel
drive, he also had quite good amount of time in the dirty 600 hp side
of 4 wheel drive rallycross supercars with Münnich Motorsport, first in their Audi
S3 RX in 2015 and then with their new SEAT Ibiza RX in late 2016,
filling in for Reinis Nitiss, who left Münnich for Olsbergs MSE.
Even though Scheider didn't impress in 2015, his rise was noticeable
in 2016, with him having a good weekend in Argentina and missing a
podium by a little margin. Pucher specially pointed out that Scheider
competes under an Austrian license so he fits in the goal of bringing
an “Austrian” driver to the team.
A few days later the team
confirmed the second driver as Kevin Eriksson jumped from the
Olsbergs MSE side. Eriksson has quite a curriculum in rallycross with
two RX Lites titles as well a title in RallyX Nordic in Sweden and
was runner-up in GRC Lites. Eriksson had his debut World RX season in
2016 with Olsbergs MSE and he only reached the semifinals until the
Estering RX, as an epic totally sideways paved the way for his first
World RX win and brought a considerable popularity rise to the sport
as his move was widely shared in social media. According to MJP
Racing Team Austria, Eriksson is still and OMSE driver, but as they
are focusing with their American commitments with Honda in the Global
Rallycross Championship, the Swede was up for grabs.
But not only name and
drivers received changes, as machinery is a 2017 Ford Fiesta RXS,
and the team even had former Toyota LMP1 driver and F1 man Alexander
Wurz doing some test laps in the new car. Wurz was revealed to be
into Pucher's wishlist but since the son of Franz Wurz couldn't
compete full time, they weren't able to settle a deal for the season.
PHOTOS: MJP Racing Team Austria, FIA
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