Seven days, September 20

The Austrian round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship has been covered in depth elsewhere on RallycrossWorld.com, suffice to say here that the event was notable both for its predictability and it’s unpredictability; as expected Reinis Nitiss and Derek Tohill secured the Super1600 and TouringCar titles with a round in hand. Nitiss was again majestic in his command of the Super1600 crowd while Tohill emerged with a battling last lap event win to take his second European title. The Supercar field was deep in quality and rich in drama, Petter Solberg losing what looked like a certain victory when the line-lock failed to release on the grid. Liam Doran then led but was stopped by a turbo failure that started a fire. Alex Hvaal, fast all weekend, was in the right place at the right time, took the lead and kept a cool head to land his first victory in fine style.

Outside of that event, the week was quiet; except in Norway where Andreas Bakkerud gathered a media posse to wave him off on his #HikeToRX. At the start of the year, when things were not going well, Bakkerud rashly promised that if he made it on to the podium before the end of the year he would hitch hike from Bergen to Hamburg for the final round of the year – the small matter of 1500km (930 miles). Good to his word, Bakkerud completed his hike, clocked up acres of media coverage in the process and raised his public profile massively. “I had a terrible journey and I’m never going to hitch again,” said Bakkerud at the end of his trip, “But I’m here now and the whole trip only cost me about €120. I have been on the TV everyday, almost every newspaper in Norway has written about this and the radio station has called me up twice a day to report on my journey.” With a big increase in followers across his social media channels, Bakkerud has gained massively from his expedition but was not planning to repeat the trick anytime soon and declined to emulate Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl when the 2014 World championship makes an Atlantic crossing.

At least partly responsible for Bakkerud doing this trip, we equipped him with a camera to record is journey for you. He failed this simple task, but managed one small victory by bringing the camera back, undamaged and in one piece. It also contained this little video. If you want to see pictures his trip go here