Enlund ‘working hard’ to put together full season in Euro RX1

Enlund has already firmly established himself in his native Scandinavia, after lifting the domestic laurels in the Crosscar category and twice placing inside the top three overall in RallyX’s Supercar Lites class in 2022 and 2023, winding up runner-up in the latter of those seasons.

Last year, the Swede finished an impressive second in RallyX’s headlining Open 4WD Pro and Pro-Am standings in his maiden campaign behind the wheel of a Supercar, and he has additionally shone in Nitrocross, but prior to 2025, he had never previously tested his mettle at European level. He swiftly made his mark. 

On his debut at Lousada, Enlund followed up a brace of top five qualifying runs on the opening day with a stellar display to clock the second-quickest time in Q4, nailing the start from the outside of the grid and thereafter controlling proceedings throughout to defeat three rapid local specialists for a commanding race win.

From fifth in the intermediate classification, the 24-year-old progressed safely through to the all-important final where he finished fourth, finding himself shuffled wide in the first corner but battling back to take the chequered flag behind only the three drivers who would go on to tussle it out for the title, as he missed out on the rostrum by less than three-quarters-of-a-second. 

“Lousada was a cool event,” he acknowledged, “and the fans were great! It was my first time racing in Portugal and we didn’t get chance to do much pre-event prep, but I really enjoyed the track – it’s a proper old-school challenge, with an awesome banked gravel section – and we were pretty fast all weekend. Of course, you always come away wanting more, but I was quite pleased with our result – it was a very solid way to start the season.” 

From there, Enlund travelled to much more familiar territory – his ‘home’ circuit of Höljes, where inclement conditions threw a curveball weekend-long. Two second places in the qualifying stages – despite struggling with his starts on the wet surface – catapulted the Ford Fiesta driver to third in the post-heats ranking amongst the 15 high-calibre contenders as he consistently unleashed prodigious raw pace.

An absence of screen wash hampered his charge in the semi-final, severely restricting his visibility and causing him to narrowly fall short of the final – but Enlund hit back in his third and final outing of the campaign at Finland’s KymiRing, another track that he was discovering for the first time. 

Notwithstanding that lack of prior knowledge, the Västerås-born ace posted the second-best run in Q1, and claimed his first fastest heat time in Q4 after pulling off an audacious last lap pass on Anton Seppä. That earned him pole position for the second semi-final, but a jump-start incurred a double joker penalty and he was fortunate that a clash behind on the opening tour delayed his rivals and enabled him to advance to the final. 

In tricky mixed conditions, Enlund crossed the finish line second in his last race of the season, only to subsequently be penalised for his part in a clash with Yury Belevskiy. Despite that disappointment, he nonetheless ended up fifth in the overall championship table, best-placed of those not to enter every round. What’s more, no fewer than eight top five qualifying performances out of 12 – five of them inside the top two – bore testament to his tremendous potential, which he is eager to exploit further in 2026. 

“Höljes was a challenge!” reflected the rising star, whose spectacular driving style earned him the sobriquet ‘Sendlund’ within the paddock. “I hadn’t driven a Supercar in the rain so much before the weekend, and it’s very difficult to master.

“I also had no engine start maps for the wet and we hadn’t been able to test in those conditions. We tried something different in each race but it never really worked out, and the starts are so important in rallycross that we were left playing catch-up every time. The windscreen washer fluid then stopped working in the semi-final, meaning the visibility got worse and worse. That was a shame, because we were very fast again.

“We were strong at the KymiRing too, and I really enjoyed my last lap pass on Seppa in Q4 – it was super-clean and not at all planned. Even now, I don’t really know how I managed to pull it off, because it wasn’t even a conventional overtaking spot – it was just completely instinctive!

“Unfortunately, my foot slipped on the clutch a bit at the start of the semi-final, but the chaos behind going into Turn Two gave us another chance and thankfully it worked out. The conditions were still difficult in the final – it was such weird weather, with part of the track wet and the other part dry – but I feel like I drove another good race and it was a pity we had the contact with Belevskiy that was completely unintentional.

“Our main objective for 2025 was to see if we had the speed to fight at the front in Euro RX1, and we have shown that we do. For me, it was fantastic to be racing at such a high level and I totally loved the experience and gained so much from it. It feels like a new era and that the sport is back on the right path again now with the new promoter in charge, and my plan for next year is absolutely to enter the full season – we’re working hard to make that happen.”