Busy time for JRX teams

Friday afternoon should be easy for the engineers working in the European Rallycross Championship, the schedule requiring only that they present the cars they tend so lovingly to scrutineering between 14 and 1900. While that appears to be going fairly well according to plan in most places around the paddock, there is one group of engineers who have called in every spare hand and are working hard this afternoon.

JRX teams are completing their cars this afternoon.  © Tim Whittington/RallycrossWorld.com

This weekend’s Norwegian ERC event, dubbed ‘Rallycross in Hell’, will include the debut of the new Junior ‘JRX’ category. The first crop of cars from the MAKS Events company that has created and backed the new formula are here, but are not yet complete and all of the teams that will run them are busy with the final assembly of the new machines. “They are going together quite well so that’s good but we are missing a couple of parts and expect them to be here later today,” said Set Promotion boss Jussi Pinomäki whose team has three entries in the new series. All of the cars appear to be in a similar state of build, even the prototype that was used to give demonstration runs during the launch of the class in Austria last month being subject to work. “I don’t think it will be a problem because everything is going well but we all have a lot of work to do,” said Kevin Hansen who is sharing the work of completing his own car with older brother Timmy.

Kenneth Hansen, a partner in the MAKS organisation, explained why the cars will be running only with front-wheel drive here. “There is a problem, or what we think is a potential problem, with one part so we decided that it was best not to take any chances and run all the cars with front-wheel drive in the first races and add the rear-drive when we are confident that everything is working properly. It’s not really a problem, the prototype car was front-wheel drive when we drove it in Austria and it was only going onto the loose and in the very long first corner that you really felt the car would be nicer with four-wheel drive. From the outside you can’t see any difference,” he said.

Launched at the prize-giving for the 2011 championship in January of this year, it has taken French team Mtechnologies just six months to complete the design, prototype build and testing of the JRX concept as well as getting the first seven cars to Norway. Boss Marc Laboulle recently reported that he had sold ten of the cars that are powered by a two-cylinder snowmobile engine that drives, via a belt, through a Sadev sequential gearbox.

• JRX round one entries
• 3 Kevin Hansen (S) Hansen Motorsport
• 5 Joni Wiman (FIN) Set Promotion
• 6 Ada Marie Hvaal (N) Hansen Motorsport
• 7 Magda Andersson (S) Hansen Motorsport
• 31 Teemu Suninen (FIN) Set Promotion
• 66 Firmin Cadeddu (F) Mtechnologies
• 96 Marat Knazev (RUS)

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