Larsson slides to Nitro RX championship at Glen Helen
Robin Larsson secured the 2022-23 Nitro Rallycross title with victory in the season finale at Glen Helen Raceway in California.
Larsson endured a tough start to the triple-header event, finishing off the podium on both Friday and Saturday, but was able to turn it up exactly when it mattered to lock in a championship that he had led since round one.
Starting the damp six-lap final on the second row of the grid, he rocketed up to second by the first turn, sneaking up the inside of his Dreyer & Reinbold stablemate Fraser McConnell. Kevin Eriksson, who’d started on pole, meanwhile, settled into a comfortable early lead.
Second behind Eriksson would’ve been enough for Larsson, but when Eriksson retired on the second lap with a gearbox issue, it made the win for Larsson a mere formality. In the short-term, McConnell cycled to the lead but slipped behind Larsson when he took the joker on lap five.
Andreas Bakkeurd, Larsson’s closest challenger for the championship and Friday’s round winner, followed both home to make it a DRR podium lockout. He jokered on lap one in a bid to undercut Larsson, but had to settle for third overall.
Oliver Eriksson was fourth ahead of Benito Guerra who led into the final lap, leaving his joker until very late. Outgoing champion and Saturday winner Travis Pastrana finished sixth ahead of his Vermont SportsCar teammate Conner Martell, with Kevin Eriksson classified eighth after his retirement.
Ahead of the final, both XITE Energy Racing drivers, Oliver Bennett and Timo Scheider, were eliminated after finishing third and fourth in the Last Chance Qualifier.
In NRX NEXT, Tommi Hallman won again to wrap up the world title, while Gregoire Michaud took the Side-by-Side crown with a final victory.
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
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