Back on the pace

The EKS Audi Sport team was back in the winner’s circle over the weekend at the FIA World Rallycross (RX) Championship round in Riga, Latvia, with former World Champion, Mattias Ekström in his Audi S1 EKS RX quattro clinching second outright. It was the sixth podium for the team this season and sees Ekström pass his teammate, Andreas Bakkerud, in the divers’ standings to move into second position. The result also sees Audi strengthen its second position in the teams’ classification.

Ekström finished just 2.3 seconds behind the round winner, Johan Kristoffersson in his Volkswagen, after performing well in the sem-final to secure his place in the all-important final.

“I’m pleased about the solid weekend, we had several good preliminary races and made great starts,” Ekström said after the final race. “But I obviously want to win races – and we were very close again here. There are several world championship rounds still ahead of us and we’ll be fighting just as hard,” he said. 

Andreas Bakkerud and DTM star Nico Müller, who contested his first wild card race of the season in Latvia, also qualified for the semi-finals behind the wheel of their Audi S1 EKS RX quattro race cars, but ran into trouble during the race. A collision at the start saw Bakkerud’s Audi pushed into Müller’s, resulting in significant damage to both cars and an end to their campaign for the round. 

“It was one of the hardest weekends that I’ve had this season,” said Andreas Bakkerud of the round. “I fought at the beginning with my pace and to find the right set-up. In the semi-final I made a good start, but I got squeezed by the two Peugeots in the first corner and my race was destroyed as a result.”

In two weeks (September 29 – 30), the FIA World Rallycross Championship heads to the USA to Austin Texas, for the second of three rounds this season to be held outside Europe. With plenty of points still on offer in the run in to season’s end, EKS Audi Sport will be leaving nothing on the track in the fight for the championship. And, with Ekström and Bakkerud sitting in second and third position respectively, competition will be fierce to see just who will prevail in 2018.