In Janno Ligur’s last race in the FIA European Rallycross Championship – in Riga at the end of 2019 – he finished on the podium. When he rejoins the fray at Catalunya later this month (23/24 July), the Estonian makes it clear that he has every intention of picking up from where he left off.
It is somewhat strange to consider Ligur a ‘veteran’, given he is still only 24 years of age, but a veteran of Euro RX he unquestionably is after making his debut in the championship all the way back in 2012, with a point-scoring finish in the Super1600 (now RX3) category at Kouvola having just turned 16.
The following year, he piloted his Ligur Racing Škoda Fabia to three semi-final appearances from four starts, improving upon that to progress to the semi-final stage in every event he contested in 2014, reaching the rostrum in Belgium and placing seventh in the end-of-season classification despite not entering all of the rounds.
2015 marked the Karksi-Nuia native’s maiden full campaign in the championship, while a further two podium visits in 2017 propelled him to a career-high sixth in the standings. Buoyed by the momentum of victory in the opening round of the domestic series recently and the memory of his Latvian rostrum in 2019, he is fired-up for the fight as he prepares to return to the grid in Barcelona in three weeks’ time.
“It has been a really long break from Euro RX for us,” Ligur acknowledged. “We hope to be competitive with our new Škoda Fabia Mk3 – we built it last year and have done a couple of national events with it. The car feels really good, and a big step forward from our old Fabia Mk2.
“We want to start our season with good speed and reach the final. The door to the final is getting smaller every year as the level of competition intensifies, but I know that we have a great car underneath us and we will give our best in Barcelona before focusing on developing even more over the remainder of the campaign.”