Marklund goes Audi in EKSRX and TT Sport Cup

Anton Marklund joins EKS – not one of the most predictable stories of the winter but the one that was broken thus week. The 22-year-old Swede will move from his family-run Marklund Motorsport to join Mattias Ekstrom’s EKS Audi team in the same year that he also plans to dovetail World RX with a move to circuits in the new Audi TT Sport Cup. “This is an amazing opportunity that Mattias and EKS are giving to me, both to score top results in 2015 and to develop on all levels for my future career,” said Marklund who will also benefit from some coaching and advice from Ekstrom in his circuit racing.

There were awards ceremonies across europe last weekend, FIA President Jean Todt was present at the MSA awards in Britain where Julian Godfrey collected the British championship trophy for the fourth time in succession. That event meant that Todt missed out join the FIA Off-Road Prize-Giving in Vienna, to which he sent a message saying, “…we have seen the series [FIA Rallycross Championship] enjoy a huge upsurge in popularity and success … while for 40 years it remained confined to only a handful of european countries the potential for development is considerable and the FIA is delighted by this …” Todt also congratulated Petter Solberg, the first World Rallycross Championship, underlining the Norwegian’s unique achievement of being the first ever to have won World championships in different disciplines.

In Sweden, meanwhile, the SBF acknowledged the extraordinary success of Olsbergs MSE by presenting a Life Time Achievemenyt award to Maria and Andreas Eriksson, a remarkable few years in the history of their team crowned with this year FIA World Team Championship. EKS RX driver and team manager Pontus Tideland and Emil Axelsson were awarded for their WRC2 success in Rally Germany. Sebastien Eriksson collected a youth award while Morgan Ostlund and Leif Halvarsson from Finnskoga MK (the Holjes organiser) picked up a club leadership award.

The first event of the RallyX on Ice series in Sweden has been cancelled because of unseasonably warm weather in Orebro. Better news for the series is that Marcus Gronholm will drive in the sprint event in Karlstad that will run alongside Rally Sweden. Gronholm will appear alongside another ex-WRC man Thomas Radstrom, while when the series moves to Holjes Per Eklund is set to join the fun.

The Irish Rallycross Championship has a new sponsor after an unusual initiative in which companies bought a €500 ticket for a raffle, with the winning company taking title sponsorship of the series. The championship will also break new ground this year with two events at Tynagh during the summer. The British championship will also return to Mondello with a double-header British-Irish championship weekend in June.

1. February 1 – Mondello
2. March 1 – Mondello
3. May 10 – Tynagh
4. June 27-28 – Mondello
5. August 23 – Tynagh
6. October 11 – Mondello
7. November 1 – Mondello

This week we also learned that the last car raced by Trevor Hopkins will be back in action later this year as Terry Maynard restores the RS200 for Retro Rallycross. There’s not much video featuring Hopkins, but the car features in several of the (quite scary) clips in the below.

We also learned that letting a skier loose in a rallycross car looks like a whole lot of fun!

[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPSuLv8o85c[/tube]

[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceLhHygBA4g[/tube]

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