Inside Story – Helmia Motorsport Rallycross Team

This morning Helmia Motorsport officially confirmed the plans it revealed in December to field multiple Crosskart champion Lukas Walfridson in FIA World Rallycross Championship events this season, including an assault on the five round European championship.

We made the journey to Sweden for an exclusive RallycrossWorld insight into the home of Helmia Motorsport. Located in the town of Torsby, just down the road (in Swedish miles) from Holjes, the team’s raceshop comprises a generous storage/workshop area in which Crosskarts nestle alongside Helmia’s 2012 four-cylinder Clio Supercar. With space for stores and separate areas for dirty and clean work, there is also a workshop bay occupied by the current Supercar. Stripped to a shell and undergoing a full rebuild as it passes from Stig-Olov to Lukas Walfridson. The man entrusted to complete this task is Sven-Inge Neby, with four decades at Helmia, the oldest serving member of the team now preparing its lead car for the one of the youngest. The workshop is by no means the most glamorous around, but it is a workshop, and one that is obviously very well thought out and functional.

The three sons of Helmia founder Helmer Walfridson have all enjoyed long and successful careers in motorsport alongside their roles within the flourishing family business. Next to the raceshop is a building used by Helmia for meetings and presentations, the walls of an impressive boardroom lined from floor to ceiling with trophies accumulated across the last half-century. Almost any family that has been so long in the motor trade would have acquired the odd vehicle from which it could not bear to be parted; on the Walfridson scale, and with motorsport in the mix of activities, that means that the ground floor of this building is given over to a museum of treasured cars.

“We are good at collecting stuff, and Pernilla has collected a husband who also collects stuff, so we have some of his stuff here too,” says Lars Erik Walfridson as he shows us the Subaru World Rally Car in which Petter Solberg won his first top flight rally, (Wales Rally GB in 2002), and the brand new limited edition road going Impreza, one a piece given to Solberg and co-driver Phil Mills by the Japanese manufacturer for winning the World title in 2003. They are accompanied by Solberg’s Porsches and the rallycross SuperNational Volvo 240 in which the World rallycross star first came to prominence. “We have some more cars somewhere else, but the racecars are here, and the stuff connected to them. It’s still growing, perhaps we will need more space sometime…”

That last statement is perfectly borne out by the presence of Lars Erik’s Renault R5 Turbo rally car and the museum’s latest addition, his son Lukas’ Crosskart. There are a couple of Volvo Amazons, but regrettably not their mother’s shopping car ‘borrowed’ for furtive first motor sport events, a gorgeous A110 Alpine, Pernilla’s last Mitsubishi rally car. A Volvo 240 Turbo, the last car that Lars-Erik used in competition. The collection is fabulous, and very much part of the family history. Motorsport is so ephemeral, today’s must have, tomorrow’s worthless throw-away or reduced value trade-in.  The awards claimed by drivers are more closely treasured and the combined effect of the accumulated haul amassed by three very successful brothers, as well as their offspring, are, when spotlit and encased in glass, hugely impressive.

The first awards in the collection date from 1969 when Per-Inge started his competition career; “It should have been 1968, but he was riding his motorbike on the way to the test so that he could have a licence and the police caught him, so he he had to wait for a year before he could get a licence,” explains Lars-Erik. What little wall space not taken up by the trophy cabinets is covered in photographs in the best possible testament to the competitive nature and success of this family. “Our wives are all quite pleased that the trophies are here, one or two of the nicest ones are still in our homes, but we needed somewhere for the rest…” says Lars-Erik.

Helmia Motorsport is steeped in history and is justifiably proud of that and all that it has achieved. Motorsport, however, is dynamic and while Helmia celebrates it heritage, it does not linger; the decision to put Lukas Walfridson into its rallycross Supercar for 2014, and to embark on a European season that is seen as laying the foundations for a future World championship campaign, is the best example of how this family-run team operates and its desire to achieve more.

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