Danielsson makes rallycross move

Alx Danielsson, the 2006 Formula Renault 3.5 champion, will join the World Rallycross Championship field in a Munnich Motorsport Audi S3. The 34-year-old Swede is teaming up with owner/driver Rene Munnich for the first three rounds of the season in Portugal, Germany and Belgium.

World Touring Car Championship race winning team Munnich ran its brand new Audi at World RX events in Germany and Italy last year, and will increase to two cars for a full 2015 program.

"I worked with one of Rene's engineers previously, and the team asked me in the new year, and we arranged for me to do the start of the season," said Danielsson. "The car is only just finished, and we will test this week.

"At the moment I'm just doing the first three rounds, if they go well then hopefully I can do some more, we will see. Doing FIA world championship events is a very big deal for me. I've been called in to do one-off rounds in all sorts of different things, but never in an FIA World Championship before. I'm really excited."

Since his open-wheel career fizzled out, Danielsson has made appearances in Scandinavian Touring Cars, Porsche racing and stock cars, attempting to break into NASCAR in recent years and getting as far as a Nationwide Series outing at Mid-Ohio in 2013. He has not previously driven a rallycross car but does not expect it to take long to adapt to Munnich's S3.

"Everybody in Sweden who is into cars likes rally and rallycross, but I haven't driven a rallycross car like this before," said Danielsson. "Having said that, I have driven pretty much everything else there is to drive, so this lies in the mix somewhere. That's something that has helped me a lot in my career, I am able to adapt to new cars and I work well with developments and engineers.

"The car is brand-new, it's an amazing technical achievement that everything apart from the shell is done in-house. This really is a development year for the whole team."

Munnich, himself an experienced rallycross Supercar driver, will combine his World Rallycross campaign with his season in the TCR International Series, where he drives a Honda Civic for WestCoast Racing.

Originally on Autosport.com