Audi and EKS to start as leaders of the standings in Portugal

The FIA World Rallycross Championship will be entering round two at Montalegre, Portugal, next weekend (22^nd and 23^rd April). Following his victory in the season opener at Barcelona, World Champion Mattias Ekstrom is traveling to Portugal as the front runner in the drivers' championship.

At first glance, the track layout featuring a 250m-long start-finish straight promises few challenges, but the devil is in the detail. The long Joker section every driver has to complete once per race hardly offers grip. In the subsequent weave of turns, the extremely high curbs do not forgive any mistakes. In addition, overtaking is extremely difficult because, except for turn one, there are few opportunities to 'brake past' rivals on the 945m track, which is the shortest one on the calendar.

In addition to the lead in the drivers' championship, Ekstrom, together with Finnish teammate Toomas Heikkinen, would like to defend the top spot in the teams' standings as well, which EKS is leading tied on points with Team PSRX Volkswagen Sweden. The EKS team with Ekstrom and Heikkinen is completed by Reinis Nitiss from Latvia, who is on the grid at all 12 rounds of the season in the team's third Audi S1 EKS RX quattro.