Johan Kristoffersson: The Modern day Super Swede

In the seventh chapter of my Driver Spotlight Series, where I review some of the best racing drivers who are still racing today, I look at a driver who is dominating one of the most exciting motorsport disciplines, Rallycross.

Johan Kristoffersson has without doubt been one of the best racing drivers in motorsport this year. He’s on unbelievable form in the craziness that is the FIA World Rallycross Championship. Last year, he set new records and this year, he has destroyed those records to set new ones which will surely last for years to come.

The nickname “Super Swede” was given to F1 driver Ronnie Peterson who was well known for his raw speed. Kristoffersson is without doubt the fastest and best rallycross driver on the planet and one of the greatest ever.

Here are some stats on what makes him – he has a record 20 wins, has taken 9 consecutive wins this season, taken a record 17 Top Qualifier, including 6 in a row and has been in the final on 30 of the last 31 events. You can score a maximum score of 30 points at a rallycross event, Kristoffersson’s average this season is just over 28. Those are just some of the ridiculous stats which is simply mind boggling.

Rallycross is such an unpredictable sport and it is so easy for one mistake or one piece of bad luck to ruin your while weekend. Somehow, Kristoffersson stays out of trouble and makes remarkable recoveries to end up on top when it matters most, with this weekends season finale being a prime example. But, to do this consistently is something very few can do. It’s very much like Sebastian Loeb when he competed in the WRC.

Then again, WRC and even F1 were viewed as a sport which you couldn’t really dominate until Michael Schumacher and Sebastien Loeb did that very thing which set a benchmark for what you are seeing now with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastien Ogier. Kristoffersson is the Loeb/Schumacher of rallycross at the moment. He has shown that you can be incredibly consistent in a form of motorsport which had thousands of elements, a lot more than other motorsports.

This year in Canada, Kristoffersson was down in 9th after Q2 (out of the four qualifying sessions) and managed to claw his way back to 1st after Q4. This is unheard of and I don’t think anybody had previously gone from such a low position at the halfway mark of qualification to end up being the top qualifier.

He has also made recoveries during single races, most notably in Loheac in the final when he was at the back after a poor start (something that is very rare for the Swede) but a brilliant use of getting his joker lap done at the perfect time and nailing fastest lap after fastest lap saw Kristoffersson emerge ahead of the two Audis (the leading cars) after they made their joker laps on the final lap. It was the closest ever final between all six cars in a final (i.e the smallest gap from 1st – 6th).

Why is Kristoffersson so good? It simply is just a number of key factors coming together which has created his dominance over the past 18 months.

First, his spotter Tommy Kristoffersson has been a great asset to Johan’s success. Tommy, is Johan’s father and was himself a rallycross driver, competing in the FIA European Rallycross Championship in the 1990s. Now, he tells Johan when to take his joker lap and tells him the gaps to the cars that are behind him (which he has done in nearly every race Johan has competed in this year!) Tommy is super calm and in the interviews he gives he rarely shows emotion.

Kristoffersson races with Volkswagen and always has been a Volkswagen driver. VW became a fully backed manufacturer team from 2017 and it was last season where Kristoffersson’s success started. He has gelled with them a bit like Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull did, or any other motorsport comparison you would want to make. Though like Vettel, some say that Kristoffersson is only dominating because of the car.

I think otherwise.

Lets not forget that his teammate; Petter Solberg, the last person to win a WRC title who wasn’t called “Sebastien” and a double FIA World Rallycross Champion himself. Of course, Solberg has suffered from an illness recently and his vision isn’t the best anymore. He is now 44 and has had to get used to the VW after winning most of his races and championships in a privateer Citroen.

But, it’s not clear at all that the VW is best because it’s not like Kristoffersson wins every single race with a massive margin. It’s just that he manages to come out on top every single time. The manufacturer Audi and Peugeot cars are more than competitive and should have been able to take some wins this season (and last season) but they haven’t executed perfect weekends and that’s what you have to do to beat the mighty Kristoffersson.

They may have thrown everything at him, including the Audi pair of Mattias Ekstrom and Andreas Bakkerud playing dirty at times, but the drivers themselves or their teams have just lacked that extra tenth or made a wrong strategical call which has cost them the win. Kristoffersson has capitalised every single time or has simply been unbeatable.

It’s not just rallycross Kristoffersson has had success in.

This year, he won the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship alongside his rallycross duties. Very few drivers can win double championships in the same year. He took three wins and seven podiums, to put that in perspective neither of his teammates took any podiums. Kristoffersson had won that particular championship before in 2012, by just a mere six points.

In fact in 2012 alone, the then-23-year-old won the International Superstars series in Italy and the Scandinavian Porsche Carrera Cup. So that’s three championships in three drastically different series the same year.

I would love to see Kristoffersson have a proper go at rallying one day. He entered into WRC2 in Sweden this year, took a respectable 6th place. However, he was quite a bit behind the top five. Kristoffersson has only done two WRC events and a handful of other rallies, so it wasn’t a bad result. But if he can continue to dominate in rallycross, he may want to give himself a new challenge, a la Loeb.

The final round of the 2018 FIA World Rallycross Championship was this weekend in South Africa at the Killarney International Raceway in Cape Town. Despite a poor qualifying, he made it 11 wins out of twelve, ending the season with an almost perfect points score. Surely a record to stand for the ages.

To read the rest of my articles on some of the standout drivers in motorsport who are still competing, see below…

Lewis Hamilton: Britain’s Greatest Ever Racing Driver

Sebastien Loeb: The French Rally King

Kamui Kobayashi: Fearless and Underrated

Jimmie Johnson: NASCAR’s Greatest Racing Driver, America’s Best

Fernando Alonso: Too big for his own boots?

Jamie Whincup: The Australian Michael Schumacher