In front of 35,000 fans, the reigning Global RallyCross champion finished fourth in the second semi-final at the Höljes track, which meant there would be no appearance in the final for the 23-year-old flying Finn.
But even though his challenge in Sweden – his team’s home event – ended prematurely, Heikkinen is still in the fight for the inaugural FIA World Rallycross Championship title and heads to the Circuit Jules Tacheny in Belgium next week (July 11-13) in a strong fourth position in the drivers’ standings.

”The first day was good but not perfect,” said Heikkinen. ”The car wasn’t quite perfect in either race on Saturday but I still managed to do the fourth fastest time in both races, which put me in fourth after the first day. We tried to maximise our potential on day two and I was sixth after the heats and into the second semi.”
He continued: ”I got pretty good start from the inside of the second row and was third into the first corner. My car was pretty good but Timmy Hansen’s retirement on his ’joker’ lap affected our strategy. In the end it was bad for us as when I did my ’joker’ lap on second to last lap I was behind Sebastian Eriksson, Andreas Bakkerud and Petter Solberg and finished fourth.”

Despite the setback, Heikkinen is remaining positive ahead of the midway point of the season: ”I’m disappointed, as we all know in the team that we have a good and proven winning car. We have more work to do for the next race and hopefully we’ll get some luck as well.”

Provisional World RX drivers’ standings (after round five of 12):

1 Reinis Nitiss 112 points
2 Petter Solberg 103
3 Andreas Bakkerud 99
4 Toomas Heikkinen 88
5 Anton Marklund 64
6 Timur Timerzyanov 64