World RX on ice is coming

While the FIA World Rallycross Championship is jumping pretty late in this train, in order to spice the 2025 calendar, RX Promoter confirmed another venue and a somewhat new format as an ice race in Canada will be the ticket to go back to North America, in a really well known place.
 
The idea of ice racing out of the regular calendar is far from new, with the now defunct Andros Trophy being the king of them all for roughly 30 years, while RallyX had a winter championship with OMSE Supercar Lites grids in the distant north of Europe, with RallyX On Ice even counting with drivers from all over the world and some that even were incredibly out of their speciality, like Helio Castroneves and Josef Newgarden. Recently, Nitrocross included ice races in their regular calendar, with Calgary becoming a regular entry despite the problems last season that made it a non-points scoring event, while Trois-Rivières returned to the rallycross map in the 2022-23 season to make it a Canadian tour to end the season, and it is the Quebec based venue that will host the return of the World RX to North America.

Trois-Rivières hosted the World RX for six years from its creation in 2014 until 2019, with Andreas Bakkerud being the last winner while current champion and 2024 points leader Johan Kristoffersson is the driver with most wins with two triumphs in his first title winning campaigns in 2017 and 2018.
 
The idea now is that GP3R will likely open the season, considering that the date set for the event is 24 and 25 January, and with Volvo Construction Equipment taking care of preparing the circuit, it will be likely that the layout and the snowy surface will bring in different characteristics compared to when World RX visited it, where a long straight and an mildly open first corner would stretch the gears to the limit while the infield was incredibly twisty and tight, requiring special precision not only to navigate the corners, but to also avoid a massive hit in the wall.

While racing in snowy and icy surfaces is a new concept for World RX, the championship has already faced snowy weather in two ocasions, as the Semifinals and the Final of the 2018 Montalegre RX was blasted by a snowstorm in May, while the initial stages of the 2021 Nürburgring RX had snow covering the grass and a road that was so slippery that it was a monumental taks to even complete a single lap without losing balance.
 
The icy Canada RX will join Lousada, in Portugal, and KymiRing, in Finland, as the confirmed venues for the 2025 calendar, while a street event at Coventry in the state of negotiation.
 
PHOTO: Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières, Celestino Silva