This year the traditional Race of Champions will be held for the second time in the Swedish Pite-Havsbad. It’s been less than a week and the organizers reported that construction of the ice rink is well underway and nearing completion.
Temperatures there nowadays remain slightly below zero degrees and the forecast is quite favourable: local weather forecasters promise that the weather will be about the same on January 28 and 29.
The 2023 ROC racing arsenal has changed from Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 sports cars to Spanish Cupra Urbanrebel Concepts with 435 horsepower electric powertrains. It is no coincidence that the word “concept” appears in the name, since mass production of such electric vehicles will not begin until 2025.
The rest of the cars are familiar to anyone who has competed in the ROC in recent years: these are the Zeroid X1 electric rallycross cars (335 hp), which are entered by the FIA in the World Rallycross Championship in the RX2e category. Only now they have a new name, because a year ago it was simply called FIA RX2e.
Also, racers from different countries of the world will drive the rallycross Supercars Lite with 320 hp internal combustion engines, but now these cars run entirely on biofuel – a technique that has been used at ROC since 2017.
The lightest car (by weight, but not by handling) is the Polaris RZR all-terrain vehicle with 181 horsepower engines, also running on biofuel. A year ago Sebastien Loeb and Sebastian Vettel battled on the RZR in the final of the Race as champions, after which the nine-time World Rally Champion won.
We can add that the ROC program will include the appearance of Swedish stuntman Jonas Hedberg, who will demonstrate his tricks on such a Polaris RZR.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
