Entering the final day of the Extreme E season with Rosberg X Racing atop of the championship standings is a familiar story.
The team won the first season of the all-electric off-road championship before narrowly missing out a repeat last year. While RXR having the box seat in a championship fight may be something we’ve seen before, it wasn’t until Saturday where the team actually held the championship lead in 2023, grabbing it after a win in the final ahead of Acciona Sainz’s Mattias Ekstrom and Laia Sanz. Now the duo of Johan Kristoffersson and Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky go into the second day of racing at the Copper X Prix with a six-point lead.
“It helps that we were in a similar position last year in the championship fight on the last day of the championship,” Kristoffersson told RACER. “That always helps to have that experience and it’s great to see Rosberg be in the championship fight for the third season in a row.
“It’s always the goal to come to the last day of the championship and be in…contention and now we are actually in the lead for the first time this year, so that’s great.”
The day could hardly be described as straightforward for RXR, or any of the other title protagonists for that matter. While GMC Hummer EV Chip Ganassi Racing and Veloce Racing were both involved in car-breaking crashes and Acciona Saiz suffered an electrical issue, RXR’s day began with a puncture in Q1 after contact with NEOM McLaren’s Tanner Foust.
“There was quite a lot of crashes in Q2 which was maybe not so great to see, but yeah, we didn’t have the best Q1 – Tanner was a bit over excited, forced us to [have] a puncture,” Kristoffersson said. “That happens. That’s how it is, so we just knew we had to fight back from there.”
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A Q2 win followed before a tense fight with Acciona Sainz in the final, whereby Kristoffersson snatched the lead from Ekstrom in the dying moments of his stint after two laps of sparring with his former World Rallycross rival.
“I had a few tricks for him in the first couple of corners, but he knew what I was up to so he covered that one off very well,” he said. “But it was a very enjoyable final, to just have one or two laps of just driving with no issues, now yellow zones, just drive, try to pass Mattias and enjoy it, so that was fun.
“We had quite similar pace, he did a few mistakes, I did some mistakes first, I dropped back a bit and then I managed to catch him back. Then I managed to just get ahead of him going into the Switch, tried to stay as close as possible to hand the car over to Mikaela in a great spot.”
Ahlin-Kottulinsky was handed a clean car and the race lead, but faced a far from easy task resisting the charging Sanz who’d took over the red machine that was breathing down her neck.
“I knew Laia was strong and that she was going to be really quick, so for me it was more about trying to keep clean lines and knowing where she was, so just try to see her in the rear mirror,” Ahlin-Kottulinsky told RACER. “I couldn’t [see Sanz]. The team was really quick in giving me information of where she was, so I just tried to keep tight lines, keep her behind me.”
The win, RXR’s third of the season, prompted jubilant scenes from Ahlin-Kottulinsky and the rest of the RXR squad, but they were short-lived, with there still being another full championship round to go and a job to finish off.
“Crossing the finish line, we were super happy,” she said. “I mean, everyone here getting up at [5 a.m.] to head to the track and [be so late getting back]… It’s a new day tomorrow so we’re focusing on what we can improve for tomorrow.”
The team, once again, heads to finals day as the one everyone’s chasing, something that Kristoffersson quips is “not a disadvantage at least.”