The GRX Taneco team will enter three cars in the FIA World Rallycross Championship 2019 – at least at selected rounds.
The Finnish team will run updated Hyundai i20 Supercars, which they made their debut with in 2018.
Niclas Grönholm and Timer Timerzyanov will once again be the full season drivers for the team, while Reinis Nitiss will become the test and reserve driver for the team, but will have a few race starts too.
Photo: FIAWorldRallycross.com
Niclas Grönholm, son of team boss and double WRC Champion Marcus Grönholm, will enter his fourth full season in World RX, with the two most recent being run with the family team. He has been in the final four times, with three of those being in 2018 with the Hyundai cars.
Timur Timerzyanov has been on a World Championship Supercar podium twice in his career so far, with a total of 11 visits to the final in 5 seasons. Timerzyanov is actually the only driver confirmed for the upcoming World RX season, who has participated at all rounds since the series started in 2014.
Reinis Nitiss was a full time driver in World RX from 2014 until 2017, but he went back to the European Championship for Supercars in 2018 – and won! That was his third European title, after winning the NEZ-1600 title in 2012 and the Super1600 title in 2013. He finished his debut season in World RX in third place, behind Petter Solberg and Toomas Heikkinen. He drove for the EKS team in 2017, but was always ranked third within the team, since Mattias Ekström and Andreas Bakkerud were constantly beating him. When the team decided to scale down a little for the 2018 season, he opted to go back to the European Championship, and took the title.
The number of seats in the World Championship has been massively reduced for the 2019 season, since all works teams have pulled out of the season. But that makes the chances for a really professional team like GRX Taneco, to perform even better, since they were able to annoy the big teams like Peugeot, Audi and Volkswagen during the 2018 season.
The FIA World Rallycross Championship 2019 starts on 5-6 April at the Formula 1 circuit in Abu Dhabi, where a purpose build Rallycross track will appear.
