JOHAN KRISTOFFERSSON

 

The most successful rallycross racer of the current generation, Johan Kristoffersson is the son of former rallycross and touring car driver Tommy Kristoffersson.

In the early stages of his career, he contested the Junior Touring Car Championship for the family-run Kristoffersson Motorsport (KMS) outfit in 2008, winning two races on his way to fourth in the final reckoning, before spending the next two years competing in the Swedish Touring Car Championship.

The 2011 season yielded a brace of podium finishes and tenth position overall in the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship with Team Biogas.se, despite only entering just over half of the 18 races. A parallel campaign in the Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia saw Kristoffersson take the fight for glory right the way down to the wire.

2012 marked a breakthrough for the Swede, with title triumphs in the Italian-based Superstars Series, the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship and the Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia – and in 2013, he made his competitive debut in the FIA European Rallycross Championship on home soil at Höljes, reaching the semi-final stage behind the wheel of a KMS-run Volkswagen Scirocco.

Further European and World Championship outings followed in 2014 – including Euro RX victory at Franciacorta – before he truly turned up the wick in 2015 as he cemented his full-time switch to World RX. Piloting a Volkswagen Team Sweden VW Polo, he won the Montalegre curtain-raiser, with four further rostrum results firing him to third in the Drivers’ table.

A second career success came in France in 2016 as Kristoffersson improved to grab the runner-up spot in the standings behind countryman Mattias Ekström, setting him up for record-breaking back-to-back title charges in 2017 and 2018 with the rebranded PSRX Volkswagen Sweden team and a factory-developed Polo Supercar. From 24 starts over the course of the two seasons, he claimed 18 victories and only missed the podium on three occasions.

He did not return to defend his laurels in 2019, instead focussing on the FIA World Touring Car Cup, in which he took three wins en route to fifth in the points table for Sébastien Loeb Racing. That preceded a sensational World RX comeback in 2020 in a KMS-fielded Polo, with four victories from eight rounds and no finish lower than fourth securing Kristoffersson a third Drivers’ trophy. A move to KYB EKS JC in 2021 produced a fourth crown in five years, rebounding from a luckless start to ultimately get the verdict on countback after concluding the campaign tied on points with countryman Timmy Hansen in a dramatic Nürburgring finale.

Kristoffersson signed up to his first European Championship event in almost eight years when he entered Höljes’ ‘Magic Weekend’ with his trusty KMS Polo in 2022.

Successful rallying exploits over the years have additionally served to underscore the multiple champion’s versatility, while he signed up to the inaugural season of Extreme E with Rosberg X Racing in 2021, winning three rounds out of five in partnership with Molly Taylor to take the title.