Last weekend, Johan Kristoffersson made the most of the final round of the RallyX championship to claim a second title in three in the Scandinavian series.
The end of the season and the last two races of the championship, held on the Grenland and Höljes circuits, were a one-way story for Johan Kristoffersson.
Able to win on two consecutive occasions to claim a 13th victory and a total of 20 podiums in his RallyX career, Johan Kristoffersson lived up to his status as a five-time Rallycross World Champion.
The KMS driver swept all before him. Scoring 60 of the 60 points up for grabs between Grenland and Höljes, and with eight qualifying heats victories to his credit, Kristoffersson quite simply extinguished the competition’s hopes.
“This title means more to me than I could ever have imagined. A championship is still a championship, and after the turbulent season we’ve had between the development of the Polo and what may have happened in the World Championship, winning a second RallyX championship by finishing the season with two victories is a very good feeling,” emphasizes Johan Kristoffersson.
However, it’s fair to say that his rivals have made life difficult for him since Grenland, competing with the Swede in terms of pure speed. In Höljes, Yury Belevskiy and Ole-Christian Veiby took advantage of the two free practice sessions to get the better of Johan Kristoffersson.
However, the KMS driver was quick to react.
“We made a few changes at the beginning of the race because I didn’t feel totally comfortable behind the wheel of the car, and our work began to produce its first effects in Q1. It’s a good thing because I have to admit that we suffered during free practice. We continued to try out some interesting things in Q2 and this enabled us to attack the second day of the race with a better knowledge of what was possible to achieve with this VW Polo”.
Despite starting the season at the wheel of an ex-Marklund Motorsport VW Polo on which Johan Kristoffersson had absolutely no experience, the KMS team nevertheless managed to take this 2014-built Supercar to the next level race after race.
“We could go even further to make this car perform even better and to know precisely which areas we could play on to adapt our set-up as closely as possible to changing track conditions. However, when you’re getting off to such good starts as the ones I’ve been able to make, I don’t think there’s any need to go too far. Sometimes you just have to make do with what you’ve got. When the speed is good and the starts are there, to keep pushing and trying to find new adjustments can also lead you to make mistakes. Even if I’m convinced that this car can go even faster, there are some things you can’t afford to test during a race weekend. For the moment, I’ve found a good balance and I’m trying not to get too far out of this zone”.
For Johan Kristoffersson, the key to the end of the championship clearly lay in his ability to get off to excellent starts.
“It’s obvious that my starts made my job easier in the last two races. Above all, we succeeded in sticking to our roadmap for this end of the season by making sure we developed the car the way we wanted, and that translated into some top results on the track.”
While Kevin Eriksson still had a slim chance of clinching the title at the start of the final race in Höljes, Johan Kristoffersson quickly took charge of locking up the outcome of this final race, despite a minor scare in the joker lap.
“When I saw the lap times of Yury Belevskiy and Oliver Eriksson, who were seven tenths faster than me at the end of the semi-finals, I quickly realized that I was going to have to attack a lot more in the final. With the sun going down, visibility was extremely poor as I went through the joker lap. I knew things were going to be tricky. My joker lap was no good, but I also knew that my rivals had been exposed to the same difficulties as me. Admittedly, I touched the barrier at the exit of the joker lap, but the contact was light. What’s certain is that I couldn’t have hoped for a better conclusion to this 2023 season”
