As the off-season continues to unfold in the RallyX championship, the 2024 season, which ended in Buxtehude last August, saw a number of new faces crowned champions. We take this opportunity to look back on a magnificent campaign.
Open 4WD Pro and Pro Am: Two trophies for the price of one for Joni Turpeinen
Although he was only supposed to compete in the first two stages of Tierp and Kouvola, Joni Turpeinen was well advised to extend his experience to the RallyX championship.
Not only did the Ford Fiesta driver get his hands on both the Pro and Pro Am championships, but the 15-year-old Finn also had the privilege of wiping Oliver Solberg from the record books by becoming the youngest driver in the history of RallyX to win in the premier class.
A consistent performer, Joni Turpeinen managed to qualify for a final nine out of ten times. Leader of the overall standings from the fourth race of the season in Kouvola, the Fiesta driver never relinquished his position.
After moving from Junior CrossCar, Turpeinen scored two wins and four podium finishes, defeating Martin Enlund and Maiko Tamm. A clear metamorphosis which proves that the RallyX championship is the ideal platform for young talent to emerge at the highest level.
Supercars Lites : Simon Olofsson nurtures his own legend
Simon Olofsson needs no introduction. The driving force behind the Supercars Lites category for more than a decade, the driver from Charlottenberg proved irresistible once again this year.
However, with an engine failure at Tierp, Simon had no choice but to run a true endurance race to try and close the gap on his rivals.
Nevertheless, the most successful driver in Supercar Lites, with 18 wins and 30 podiums in his career, was able to put all his experience to good use in the home straight of the championship.
Trailing leader Lukas Andersson by 41 points after the third round of the championship at Älvsbyn, Simon Olofsson used the last two rounds at Nysum and Buxtehude to reverse the trend, taking four consecutive victories to finally push Lukas Andersson and Casper Jansson off the top step of the final podium.
Open 2WD Pro: Tiger triples up
After relinquishing his title to Viktor Johansson in 2022, Simon Tiger had already put the Open 2WD ranks in order last season by winning a second RallyX championship.
This year, the BMW driver has been equally impressive with eight wins and a total of nine podium finishes.
Although Viktor Johansson was in contention all the way to Kouvola, it was paradoxically at his home track of Älvsbyn that the Mercedes driver lost contact with Simon Tiger.
From a 16-point advantage over Johansson when he arrived at Älvsbyn, Tiger had a 34-point lead by the end of the weekend. It was a gap that Johansson was never able to close.
One thing is for sure, Simon Tiger’s performance this year has been remarkable, with no less than 15 qualifying wins and 13 fastest race laps. What’s more, of the 30 qualifying heats contested in 2024, Simon has finished in the top three 25 times.
Open 2WD Pro Am: Wanna win? Get a Finn!
While the number of Open 2WD entries fluctuated in 2024, Lucas Gabrielsson proved irresistible at the wheel of his spectacular Toyota Starlet.
Despite only competing in six of the ten events on the calendar, the Finn finished fourth overall in the Pro category thanks to two podium finishes at Kouvola and Nysum, while four wins in the Pro Am category saw him claim the title with ease ahead of Tuomas Venäläinen and Kjetil Larsen.
In the Pro and Pro Am categories combined, Lucas Gabrielsson set the fastest time in qualifying four times, with a total of nine top-three finishes and five fastest laps.
It goes without saying that Lucas Gabrielsson will be one of the real outsiders in the Open 2WD category next season.
CrossCar Senior: Redemption for Elias Svensson
After two successive failures as painful as they were frustrating in 2022 and 2023, Elias Svensson has finally achieved his goal in the ranks of the CrossCar Senior category.
However, the Casmat driver didn’t have it easy against a formidable trio of Ronalds Baldins, Thomas Eek Murstad and Joonatan Ylilammi.
While Baldins managed to take the overall lead from the outset, Svensson briefly snatched first place from him in the second Tierp race.
Solid as a rock in 2024, the Latvian driver reacted in Kouvola to take back from Svensson the lead in the CrossCar category, which he held until Älvsbyn 1 before relinquishing it again to his Swedish rival.
In this four-driver battle, Thomas Eek Murstad came close to pulling off the perfect coup by taking first place overall during the penultimate stage of the season in Nysum. But Svensson, by taking his fourth victory of the year at Buxtehude 1, then by securing his place in the Top 10 of the intermediate classification the following day, definitively sealed the outcome of this 2024 season.
Junior CrossCar: Hampus Hagström at the top of his game
Hampus Hagström finished fifth in the RallyX championship in 2023 thanks to a superb second half of the championship, which included three qualifications for a final, and he made no bones about taking over from Mikael Uitto in the Junior category in 2024.
Although his duel with Oliver Sollie reached a climax during the first part of the season, Hampus Hagström quickly found the arguments to tip the outcome of the championship in his favour.
Indeed, although the Norwegian seemed to be well on his way to the title with three wins from the first four races of the championship, the turning point of the 2024 season came on the Älvsbyn track.
Only fifth in Race 1 and then fourth in Race 2, Oliver Sollie had to watch in spite of himself as Hampus Hagström came to the fore, scoring no less than four wins in a row to definitively overtake his Norwegian counterpart and take the RallyX title.
With six wins and a total of nine podium finishes, Hampus Hagström really proved that he was the strong man of this 2024 championship, pushing Oliver Sollie back to 32 points in the overall Junior category standings.
