Marklund suffers mechanical issues in Barcelona

PHOTO CREDIT: GC Kompetition

GC Kompetition's Anton Marklund suffered from mechanical issues at the second round of the 2019 FIA World Rallycross Championship.
In the first qualifying heat, Marklund's car suffered from a blackout and he was forced to miss the start. The race was red-flagged after Herve Knapick rolled his car, but due to the strict regulations, Marklund was not allowed to restart and he was given a DNS.

Marklund lined up alongside Chris Hoy and Oliver Bennett in the second qualifier and claimed the heat win, but he damaged his front dampers over the jump on lap 2. Despite the race win, his final time was only good enough to place him in 18th overall.

Anton’s final qualifier on Sunday saw him jump the start resulting in him having to joker twice. He got off to a good start and claimed third place into turn 3.

The two joker lap penalty did not help Marklund's charge and he missed out on a semi-final spot finishing 14th overall.

“It’s been a tough weekend with mechanical issues on Saturday, but we decided to push ahead and make a lot of changes overnight to test something new, especially to the dampers," he said.

"The Bilstein guys were super busy and the hard work paid off, so that we had a fast car on Sunday with a p3 in Q3 and the 3rd fastest lap time in Q4. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite manage to make up for lost time but Sunday’s pace was really promising, so I’m looking forward to following this up to push ahead in Spa, Belgium.”

TEXT - Junaid Samodien