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Flashback: Last time out at Barcelona RX

The FIA World Rallycross Championship returns to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya this weekend for the second ever rallycross event to be held at the venue.

With just four rounds of the 2016 season remaining, the ninth round of World RX could be critical to the title-fight and it was current points leader Petter Solberg who claimed victory at the F1 venue twelve months ago.

Solberg started on the second row of the grid for the final, behind pole sitter Timmy Hansen, who had topped the Intermediate Classification and won the first semi-final. Fellow Swede Johan Kristoffersson joined Hansen on the front-row. At the start, the front-row pair ran wide at the first corner, allowing Solberg to cut up the inside and into the lead, the Norwegian maintaining the advantage through the six lap encounter to the finish. Kristoffersson was first to take his joker lap and initially dropped to fourth, but climbed to second when Peugeot-Hansen pair Hansen and Davy Jeanney took their respective jokers. Hansen pushed Kristoffersson hard on the final lap for second position but would finish third, with Jeanney fourth and America's Tanner Foust in fifth. Robin Larsson retired on the first lap with damage sustained from contact.

OlsbergsMSE's Andreas Bakkerud and Marklund Motorsport's Topi Heikkinen were the two drivers to just miss out on making it into the final, the pair finishing fourth in each of the two semi-finals, while Mattias Ekstrom also went out of the event in the semi-final stages, he finished fifth in semi-final one. Two-time DTM driver Timo Scheider made his rallycross debut in Barcelona last year for the Muennich Motorsport team and finished 16th. The German will return for his second World RX appearance with the squad this weekend.

Zdroj: fiaworldrallycross.com