EKS Audi Sport targets a podium finish in Lohéac

PHOTO CREDIT: Audi Sport.

EKS Audi Sport drivers, Andreas Bakkerud and Mattias Ekström, are looking forward to round eight of the 2018 FIA World Rallycross Championship in front of 75,000 fans. The fans transform the small race track at Lohéac into a bubbling cauldron.. 

“Lohéac is one of the biggest events of the year on the race calendar with sheer rallycross action galore,” says Andreas Bakkerud. “Whenever so many fans turn out at the track this gives me an additional motivation boost.” 

Mattias Ekström is also excited about the popular event in Brittany: “Traveling to Lohéac is a great honor every time,” the Swede said. “The many enthusiastic spectators there make us drivers feel like rock stars.”

Ekström clinched third place last year, achieved his first podium finish on the track with a length of about one kilometer of which only 33 percent are tarmac. The section the Swede enjoys most is Turn 5 – a fast, long right-hander that runs parallel to the Joker Lap. “There, you drift in third or fourth gear, constantly keeping the car’s nose very close to the wall,” says Ekström. “Very special as well is the Joker Lap itself with a jump when you enter the corner.” 

Bakkerud in 2013 won a round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship at Lohéac. In 2016, he finished the World RX round in France runner-up. “I’ve always done well on this track,” said the Norwegian. “Following my misfortune in Canada, I definitely want to be back on podium.”

At Lohéac this year, EKS Audi Sport are fielding two additional Audi S1 EKS RX quattro's for the first time – for Nico Müller in the FIA World Rallycross Championship [one-off in Lohéac] and Szabó Krisztián in the FIA European Rallycross Championship.