This Wednesday (6) the FIA World Rallycross Championship saw not only the list of permanent entries being announced for the 2019 season, but also a good number of last hour confirmations that had even some big names in rallycross.
The first announcement of the day came from ESMotorsport, which cleared the cloud of suspense to announce that Lithuanian 19-year old Rokas Baciuska will take the seat of the only full time Skoda Fabia RX that the team will field, with the possibility of a second part-time machine to be driven by Hyundai boy Kevin Abbring.
The Lithuanian team went for a lot of testing in the new Fabia RX and used different drivers from various disciplines to evaluate the car, which brought a good number of rumored names in, with the current Super 1600 champion beating them for the seat, as Baciuska is another driver who come to the top of the rallycross ladder.
After that came a family announcement, as Team Hansen will ally with MJP Racing from Max Pucher to form Team Hansen MJP, set to field a pair of Peugeot 208 WRX cars for Timmy and Kevin Hansen.
The Swedish team was receiving partial support from Peugeot until 2018, when the French manufacturer decided to take the entry as a full factory team, only to leave after the Cape Town RX, which back then was a heavy shock for those at the family team. The work against the clock was to put the resources together to rejoin the World RX, which was concluded in the eleventh hour, and in fact the confirmation of a double entry in the new GRC Europe, where Max Pucher is involved, was a morale boost to work for more.
Team Hansen MJP has many things in favor of them, as most of the structure and staff is there, and the cars and driver lineup are well known, so it’s expected of them that this will be a good head start, which was expressed by both Timmy and Kevin.
The final announcement came full of secrets as the Monster Energy RX Cartel is established with two Audi S1 RX machines available for a returning Liam Doran and for Andreas Bakkerud, who returns to Monster Energy colors after a year with EKS where he finished third in the standings.
This will be the first full season for Doran since 2015, as his 2016 campaign with JRM was cut short due to off-track reasons, and after that he only landed a few events with GCK to replace Jerome Grosset-Janin last year.
These entries will be along with the already confirmed ones from GRX TANEC, Team STARD, GCK and GCK Academy, as well the independent entries from Münnich Motorsport, EKS Sport and XITE Racing, and the list will be boosted by some entries with partial commitment during the season.
The action starts on April 6th with the Abu Dhabi RX at the Yas Marina Circuit.
PHOTOS: FIA World Rallycross Championship, Team Hansen, Andreas Bakkerud
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