Norwegian Tommy Rustad, in the early 1990s known as the “Crown Prince” to his famous compatriot Martin Schanche, has revealed his return to Rallycross.

Rustad, who won six titles in the Norwegian Rallycross and Hillclimb Championships of the Rallycross SuperNational category between 1987 and 1992, told his native website hadeland.net today that he will return to his Rallycross roots now. After almost 15 years of tarmac racing and a one year ERC intermezzo (2006 in the team of Sverre Isachsen) the 1997 Renault Spider Eurocup winner and Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) regular for many a year is set to run a Volvo S40 SuperNational car in the NRC Class 3 “to have some fun, like in the good old days”.

The son of wellknown Norwegian racer Ola Rustad decided in favour of a Rallycross comeback after his contract with Volvo came to an end in the autumn of last year. “The situation in motorsport is pretty tough these days, one needs to bring his own money to a team to get a ride. But this is not what I want. Racing has been an important part of my life, and it gave me a lot of pleasure all the time. Now I want to continue my career by doing Rallycross in Norway again. Our SuperNational class has always offered a high level sport as well as a lot of fun, and this is very important for me,” said the man who drove the 650+bhp Ford RS200 E2 of his mentor Martin Schanche to overall victory in the Irish 1992 ERC round, being just 23 years old by then.

Photo: Rustad pictured in the Ford RS200 of Martin Schanche en route to victory in the Irish 1992 ERC round. © EL/ERC24