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Season review: Hoonigan Racing Division

Team: Hoonigan Racing Division

Car: Ford Focus RS RX

Drivers: Ken Block, Andreas Bakkerud

Teams' Championship Position: 4th (302 points)

America's Ken Block and his Hoonigan Racing Division team entered the FIA World Rallycross Championship full-time in 2016, racing a brand new Ford Focus RS RX built and developed as a partnership between Ford Performance and M-Sport.

The team signed Norway's Andreas Bakkerud to partner Block in the new cars, and with the builds completed just before the season, both drivers drove at a short test in Lousada, Portugal en-route to the opening round of the year at Montalegre. The squad didn't have long to wait for its first trophy with the Focus, Block featuring in one of the standout races of the season, semi-final two at Hockenheim, to make it into the final, where he finished on the podium in third.

Two rounds later, Bakkerud qualified on the front row of the final at Lydden Hill, only to be slowed by a broken driveshaft. At the next event, Hell in Norway, Bakkerud scored the first ever clean sweep in World RX, winning each of the four qualifying sessions, his semi-final and the final to score the Focus' first victory. In Holjes, Sweden a few weeks later, Bakkerud retired from an early qualifying race with broken suspension, but fighting back through the event he won for a second time at one of the most popular weekends of the year.

The mid-year flyaway to Canada rewarded Bakkerud with another podium, while both Hoonigan drivers made the final at Loheac in France, Bakkerud finishing second ahead of home hero Sebastien Loeb. The former Euro RX Super1600 champion's fifth podium of the year followed at the Estering, partially thanks a brilliant drive in a qualifying race when he made it to the finish with broken suspension to remain in event contention. Bakkerud started the final round of the year as part of a four-way battle for a Drivers' Championship podium and he led from lights to flag in the final to win his third event of the season and finish third in the World RX Drivers' Championship points.

Zdroj: fiaworldrallycross.com