The first round of the FIA European Rallycross Championship for Super1600 kicks off in Barcelona this weekend, the start of six-round battle where a new champion is guaranteed to be crowned this year.

With the Super1600 Champions of the last four years now competing in the FIA World Rallycross Championship – Rokas Baciuska, Krisztian Sazbo and Janis Baumanis – the champion’s position is open in 2019.

The team to beat will be Volland Racing, now running five Audi A1s for 2018 runner-up Aydar Nuriev, Russia’s Timur Shigabutdinov, Hungary’s Gergely Marton, Russia’s Artur Egorov and Yuri Belevskiy.

10 different nationalities will take to the grid this weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in nine different models of car, including Czech Republic’s Pavel Vimmer and Josef Susta, both racing Skoda Fabias, France’s Jimmy Terpereau (Skoda Fabia) and Maximilien Eveno (Citroen C2), Poland’s Radoslaw Raczkowski (Skoda Fabia) and Jakub Wyszynski (Volkswagen Polo), Norway’s Marius Bermingrud and Ole Henry Steinsholt in Skoda Fabias, Estonia’s Janno Ligur (Skoda Fabia) and Siim Salrui (Renault Twingo) and Great Britain’s Jack Thorne (Renault Twingo).

Created from rallying’s Super1600 category, the Euro RX Super1600 cars are the closest of the World RX event field to their road going cousins. The front-wheel-drive 1600cc engine cars that typically have 230 – 240 bhp and use six-speed sequential gearboxes have been developed by teams in the series for well over a decade.