Sometimes being too focused in a thing has bad consequences, and with Johan Kristoffersson and Timmy Hansen only looking at each other due to the FIA World Rallycross Championship title race, Niclas Grönholm played it smart and put his No. 68 GRX/SET Hyundai i20 RX on top at the Montalegre RX, in the World RX return to Portuguese lands.
The Portuguese round was deemed to have the smallest grid of the season, but the 8 entries turned into 7 as UNKORRUPTED and Kevin Abbring elected to not make the travel to Montalegre, and as they are a full season entry, they were fined in 10.000 Euros by the FIA as predicted in the regulations for failing to align their entry. At the moment it is unconfirmed if Abbring will be back at the Nürburgring double header.
Kristoffersson was outsmarted and outpaced in Q1 by Timmy Hansen, which along with a right front puncture, made it a session to forget, while the Hansen WRXT driver was followed by Niclas Grönholm and Enzo Ide. On Q2, than Hansens tactics prevailed on the clock over Kristoffersson’s early Joker, with Grönholm sitting between the title contenders and Kevin Hansen, and Timmy Hansen did more on Q3, topping the times in a heat where the top-4 was separated by 1.2 seconds, as Kristoffersson, Kevin Hansen and Grönholm came all over the Peugeot 208 WRX.
Q4 had Timmy Hansen dictating the tactics but ultimately failing to stay ahead of Kristoffersson and Grönholm, as Kevin Hansen was the fastest driver. Despite the fact that Kristoffersson prevented Timmy from winning Q4, it wasn’t enough to steal the top qualifier title from the Hansen WRXT driver, while the EKS JC driver at least minimized the loss to a single point in the championship table.
Semifinal 1 had the Hansens splitting strategies, and Krisztián Szabó’s mid-race Joker proved to be not in his favor, as Kevin Hansen was in the hold in second and Timmy Hansen has gone away with the win to bring maximum Semifinal points home.
The second Semifinal was done more with the purpose of deciding the Final grid and distribute the points, but a 3-car race didn’t take the guts from Niclas Grönholm, as he went the rough way to pass Kristoffersson, so to reply to this, Kristoffersson did an early Joker, although the clean air was in favor of Grönholm, who kept first place until the Final Lap, when Kristoffersson’s patience ran out and he pushed Grönholm out of his line and crushed some bollards to win the race.
The front row of the Final was shared between direct title contenders, which meant no one would be willing to concede from the go. Timmy won the battle for the first corner and the third placed Kevin Hansen went for the rescue as he was marking Kristoffersson, but the EKS JC driver was actually closer of the lead than of defending second place.
Kristoffersson put a wheel wrong and Kevin nearly got him, but sheer determination put Kristoffersson back in second. What neither of the three were counting with was Grönholm approaching fast and outpacing all of them after their Joker laps, deciding the Final in his favor on the final lap. Timmy kept his second place, but Kristoffersson going off-track to defend from Kevin Hansen wasn’t overlooked by the stewards, so he lost the third place to the other Hansen Peugeot and actually got down to sixth.
Timmy Hansen has the lead with 178 points, while Kristoffersson will suffer with the tiny losses over the weekend, as he is 14 points behind the leader and 6 points ahead of Kevin Hansen. Niclas Grönholm has 149, which still keeps him in the run, but he would need a miracle to claim the 2021 title at the Nürburgring RX double header, which ends the season on 27 and 28 November, where the FIA RX2e Championship also ends its debut season.
PHOTO: FIA
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