Five different drivers won a round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship’s top tier in 2023, with the high-calibre field generating some incredible action from Montalegre to Mettet – but who was your star of the season?
Anton Marklund was crowned Euro RX1 champion for the second consecutive campaign – the fourth European title of the Swede’s illustrious career – as the SET Promotion ace and his talented team proved that many a good tune can still be played on an old fiddle by racing to glory behind the wheel of a car built almost a decade earlier.
Jānis Baumanis was the series’ only two-time winner, and but for a brace of costly penalties that kept him out of the final in Norway and Belgium, it could well have been the Latvian celebrating come season’s end.
Patrick O’Donovan and Enzo Ide wound up tied on points, with the British teenager pipping his Belgian rival to third in the standings on countback after consistently taking the fight to his more experienced adversaries and clinching a brilliant breakthrough victory at Höljes’ ‘Magic Weekend’. Ide triumphed at Montalegre, replicating his 2022 Portuguese success.
Sivert Svardal was a hugely popular first-time winner on home soil in Hell and punched above his weight season-long in his family-run Volkswagen Polo, while Ulrik Linnemann rolled back the years as he piloted a similar car to a pair of podium finishes, with a superb performance at Mettet yielding the runner-up spoils. The Dane may have reached the rostrum again at Germany’s Estering had it not been for his spectacular heat three roll.
So who gets your vote for 2023 Euro RX1 ‘Driver of the Year’? Choose carefully – you can select only one...
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