WRX Championship starts its first all-electric season

The FIA World Rallycross Championship (WRX) has started its first all-electric season in Hell, Norway. Johan Kristoffersson won the season opener at the traditional Norwegian race track last weekend.

++ This article has been updated. Kindly continue reading below. ++

The World Automobile Federation had already announced the start of the electric WRX for 2021. However, when the decision was made in 2019, the Corona pandemic and its effects could not yet be foreseen.

In 2019, FIA initially announced that the increasingly popular WRX was to become fully electric in the long term but that in 2021 the first electric cars will compete in the WRX with the previous supercars with combustion engines. The FIA spoke of a “gradual introduction” of electric cars in the WRX, whereby from 2021, there was to be still a mixture between electric cars and combustion engines for “at least one year”. Now the World Rallycross has gone to Hell and switched to full electric power.

The multiple postponements also meant that in Hell, Norway, there were now only eight electric cars on the grid instead of the planned twelve. The drives for the electric WRX come from Kreisel Electric and produce 500 kW. This means that the WRX cars can accelerate to 100 km/h faster than a Formula 1 racing car – but of course, the top speed is considerably lower.

The Swede Johan Kristoffersson, who won the historic first WRX round, is not an unknown name in electric motorsport: as reported, Kristoffersson won the first season of Extreme E with Molly Taylor for the Rosberg X Racing team.

The fact that Kristoffersson’s rallycross racing car bore a VW logo has nothing to do with technology from the German carmaker. The drives are standard components, the Volkswagen RX1e is a pure sponsoring project. Other vehicles were on the road in the look of a Peugeot 208 or with a neutral body without design references to a car manufacturer.

Update 31 October 2022

Johan Kristoffersson has not only won the opening race as reported above, but also the championship title in the first all-electric season of the WRX. With his victory at the event in Catalonia, the Swedish driver can no longer be ousted from the top of the championship standings. The final round of the season takes place on 12 and 13 November in Germany at the Nürburgring, which now has its own rallycross track in the Müllenbach Loop area.

moveelectric.com, topcarnews.net, fiaworldrallycross.com, Krostoffersson win: fiaworldrallycross.com, fiaworldrallycross.com (update)