Bakkerud Leads DRR JC Top Five Lockout at Nitro Rallycross Sweden
Image via Dreyer & Reinbold Racing
For the second race in a row to start the 2022-23 Nitro Rallycross season, it was the Monster Energy RX Cartel-backed DRR JC duo of Andreas Bakkerud and Robin Larsson in the first two spots at the end of a Group E final at Strangnas Motorstadion in Sweden. This time, though, it was Bakkerud on top—much to the delight of the local fans.
The Norwegian would come in 1.963 seconds ahead of his Swedish teammate when all was said and done, with fellow DRR JC driver (for the weekend) Johan Kristofferson giving the team a podium sweep. It was the first race in the Group E FC1-X car for Kristoffersson, the multi-time FIA World Rallycross champion who once won 11 of 12 races in a single season, but he found himself quite at home despite having to advance to the final through the last chance qualifier. In fact, all five DRR JC-prepared cars finished in the top five, with Fraser McConnell backing up his fourth place finish from June’s Lydden Hill opener and Ole-Christian Veiby in fifth.
Saturday battle bracket winner Oliver Eriksson took the first DNF of Sunday’s final, with WRC veteran Kris Meeke also pulling off a lap later as both drivers suffered punctures. Their paths to the final couldn’t have been more different; Eriksson backed up his Saturday match racing win by smartly choosing to run the second heat race (which had fewer cars) and winning that, while Meeke didn’t get to drive on Saturday at all and advanced with a semifinal victory.
Still, it was a better weekend for them than for series founder and last year’s NRX Supercar champion Travis Pastrana; after rotten luck all event long, Pastrana came just shy of the last spot in the main event when Vermont SportsCar teammate Conner Martell denied him second place coming out of the Joker Lap on the final lap of the LCQ. Niclas Gronholm and Oliver Bennett were the other two drivers to miss the feature.
The podiums were the same for both Supercar races in Strangnas, with McConnell scoring the first over Yuri Belevskiy on Saturday, the duo flipping spots on Sunday after a track limit violation for McConnell, and Gustav Bergstrom placing third on both days. Tommi Hallman swept both NRX Next rounds for longtime Supercar Lites team SET Promotion, while Riku Huuhka and Sebastian Enholm split the CrossCar victories as six of the 10 entries on the weekend found themselves on the podium.
Nitro Rallycross Group E points through two rounds are as follows:
1. Robin Larsson, 107
2. Andreas Bakkerud, 105
3. Fraser McConnell, 72
4. Ole-Christian Veiby, 64
5. Oliver Eriksson, 61
6. Niclas Gronholm, 60
7. Kris Meeke, 55
8. Conner Martell, 53
9. Travis Pastrana, 50
10. Johan Kristoffersson, 43
11. Oliver Bennett, 32
After track build issues forced the cancellation of the planned visit to Finland’s KymiRing, the 2022-23 NRX season resumes on October 1-2 with a return to ERX Motor Park in Elk River, Minnesota. Scott Speed took last year’s Supercar checkered flag at ERX, and will return to that class as Subaru Motorsports USA makes its first rallycross start of the season.