Last weekend’s FIA European Rallycross Championship curtain-raiser at Nyirád in Hungary (29-30 April) was a thrill-fest from start to finish – and it also offered a few indications about what we can expect over the remainder of the 2023 campaign… #JB6 is back in businessFollowing a winless season in 2022 – albeit one that yielded the championship runner-up spoils – former Euro RX Super1600 (now Euro RX3) champion Jānis Baumanis got his 2023 challenge underway in the best possible fashion in Hungary, with a brilliant Euro RX1 victory behind the wheel of his RX Team Latvia Peugeot 208 WRX.Granted, early pace-setter Anton Marklund was hindered by a first corner crash in heat three, but Baumanis was always there-or-thereabouts and had the measure of the defending title-holder in the final to cement a hugely popular triumph – his first in almost 20 months. At Nyirád, SET Promotion pitched up with a car dating back to 2013, giving away years to many of its younger rivals. An ultra-competitive campaign is in prospectIn both Euro RX1 and Euro RX3, fierce battles raged weekend-long, and picking a likely winner was no easy task in either category.

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