The European Rallycross Championship continues in midsummer in Norway where Set Promotion is trying to repeat its triple win claimed in 2011.

The European Rallycross Championship continues in Hell, Norway, at the time of the Finnish midsummer. Set Promotion has excellent memories from the event: last year the team’s Renault drivers managed a historic triple win in Norway.

Now the situation is equally good as the reigning European champion Andreas Bakkerud (Renault Twingo Mk2) takes his home crowd while in the championship lead. Finn Jussi-Petteri Leppihalme (Renault Clio Mk2) is third in the standings, 15 points behind his teammate. The team’s third driver, Russian Timur Shigaboutdinov (Renault Clio Mk2) is currently 13th. Norway finishes the first half of the ERC season of which the four best events out of five will count towards the final score.

“Andreas and Jussi-Petteri know the track from last year. Andreas can start without too much pressure, because only a win can increase his point-tally. I am sure he wants to win in front of his home crowd. That’s the only goal. Jussi-Petteri is returning to his own level and for that he needs a basic race. He will probably be closer to the top than in the last few events. The third place from last year brings him good memories. For Timur this is a new course. He needs to learn it fast. He manages to find his speed on every track, but if only he could find it already on Saturday I am sure he would get into the A final,” says team manager Jussi Pinomäki.

Hell racecourse is great for the drivers. It’s fairly fast and has different altitudes. In addition the Norwegian crowd knows how to keep up the atmosphere. The Norwegian event is again a historical one for Set Promotion. It marks the first appearance of the JRX Cup cars. The Finnish team has three drivers in this category: Finn Teemu Suninen, his compatriot Joni Wiman and Russian Marat Knazev.

“Three starters in SuperCars and three competitors in the JRX Cup. It will be quite a circus for us. The expectations for the new category are high. It has been a long coming issue and a lot has been said about it. We did some testing in Sweden at the beginning of the week, and all the drivers did well there. It’s going to be an interesting weekend, and of course all the guys are raring to go,” says Pinomäki.

Set Promotion is investing in the new category which is aimed for young drivers, also because the racing engineer for JRX is French Steven Bossard, a successful competitor himself as a Rallycross champion of France and a fast man in Rallying.

Photo: Set Promotion is going to run three cars in the new JRX Cup category. © JKR/ERC24