Top 10 Drivers of 2022: Johan Kristoffersson (1st)

Series: World RX
Championship Position: 1^st
Wins: 8
Podium Finishes: 8 (1^st/1^st/1^st/1^st/1^st/1^st/1^st/1^st)

It’s not really a great surprise, is it? Throughout the 2022 FIA World Rallycross Championship campaign, Johan Kristoffersson offered up further evidence that he may just be the greatest of all time in the dual-surface discipline – with an astonishing fifth career crown cementing his status as unquestionably the best driver of the modern era.

The Swede was given the opportunity to deploy his full skillset this year. In the early rounds, he rarely enjoyed a straightforward run through the heats, leaving him with work to do to claw his way back to the front. Four straight wins bore testament to his unrivalled ability to do exactly that – in a series famous for its unpredictable nature, Kristoffersson invariably seems able to think one step ahead.

The 34-year-old actually looked to have taken five straight wins, but a penalty for contact with Timmy Hansen in Portugal dropped him from first to fifth. In the overall reckoning, it mattered little. A second double top of the season at Spa-Francorchamps earned Kristoffersson the opportunity to seal the championship spoils on the opening day in Catalunya, and while a coming-together with Kevin Hansen at the start of the final scuppered that idea, 24 hours later, he was not to be denied.

Doubtless fired-up by the disappointment of the previous day, the Kristoffersson Motorsport star came out-of-the-blocks in the single-lap SuperPole shootout and blitzed his adversaries to the tune of almost a full second – an eternity in rallycross terms. That set the tone – not to mention a rhythm that nobody else was able to follow – and underscored his raw pace as well as his peerless racecraft. Indeed, Kristoffersson lapped fastest in all ten SuperPole sessions in 2022. Catch me if you can...