The FIA World Rallycross Championship visit to Barcelona in 2020 started with another different winner, as Timmy Hansen took advantage of the improvements brought by Team Hansen and prevailed over a consistent Johan Kristoffersson to conquer the first event of the Barcelona RX double-header, as a number of drivers showed improvements in this Saturday (17), which brought a tight fight to the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona.
Despite missing both GCK Unkorrupted cars and Juha Rytkönen, along with Ferratum Team overall, the Barcelona RX had the returns of Enzo Ide with a JC Raceteknik Audi S1, Mandie August stepping up from the Euro RX to replace René Münnich at Münnich Motorsport, and Oliver Bennett in his XITE Racing Mini Cooper SX1 after spending most of the season in the British RX Championship.
Qualifying 1 was a walk on the park for Johan Kristoffersson, as despite good races of the top contenders, the VW BAUHAUS driver prevailed over them. Andreas Bakkerud got the upper hand in Q2, but although his pace was good, it was due to some rough treatment to Johan Kristoffersson in his race, triggered by Robin Larsson, who received a penalty afterwards, putting him rock bottom in the order.
The Q3 had the order in which the Qualifying ended, with Kristoffersson leading Bakkerud and Timmy Hansen, with Mattias Ekström struggling to climb the table and finishing fifth. In surprising fashion, Oliver Bennett qualified for the Semifinals, and so did Enzo Ide, but the Belgian gave his place to Robin Larsson, who was immediately below in the qualifying table, as problems in the car from Q3 were mentioned as the reason.
Barcelona RX 1 - Qualifying intermediate results
Semifinal 1 had Kristoffersson leading out of a messy start, being followed by Bakkerud and Ekström while Timur Timerzyanov opted for an early Joker Lap to avoid getting stuck behind the pack. While Kristoffersson was going away with the first place, Ekström and Bakkerud were dealing with their own matters for second place and Timerzyanov was closing in, but in the end the positions had no changes.
The Semifinal 2 was expected to be a race of high attrition, and despite an early attempt from Anton Marklund to break the Hansen 1-2, Kevin and Timmy kept their Peugeot 208 WRXs in front, keeping it close of each other in case strategy needed to play a part in their run. Larsson couldn’t take advantage of his late Joker run, falling into Timmy Hansen’s field of view and eventually losing the third place to Niclas Grönholm while Kevin Hansen led Timmy in the team’s dominant 1-2 finish.
Barcelona RX 1 - Semifinal results
The Hansen brothers were all around Kristoffersson in the Final grid, but the Volkswagen Polo GTi RX was still unstoppable while the Peugeots were right behind along with Andreas Bakkerud. Coming out of the Joker ahead of a lacklustre Mattias Ekström, Timmy Hansen was having a massive advantage over Kristoffersson, eventually taking the first position in the Final Lap, and despite a push from Kristoffersson and Timmy’s car pouring smoke all over the place, his first win of 2020 was secure.
This is the first win for Team Hansen in 2020 along with Timmy himself, while Kristoffersson gets his second runner-up finish in a row, while Kevin Hansen goes to his second podium this year. The contrasting fortunes of Kristoffersson and Ekström just drew a bigger gap in the standings, with them having 193 points and 168, respectively, with Timmy Hansen being in third with 140 points and Niclas Grönholm having 135 points in fourth place.
Even though KYB Team JC is still topping the teams table with 250 points, Team Hansen made remarkable progress into reducing the gap, now having 250 points, with GRX Taneco coming in a close third with 176 points.
The action starts for the second Barcelona RX event at 7:20 A.M. GMT.=
PHOTO: Team Hansen
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