Championship Leaders Collide! | From the Vault | Cape Town 2019

This is it then. The 196th encounter on track this year. Thank you to WRX Stats for working that out earlier on. We've got a monumental title fight on between two men, Andreas Bakkerud and Timmy Hansen. Neil Cole is with Bakkerud. This is it Andreas, it's the final. Is this the best place to be? How are you feeling as you're about to launch into the last race of the season? Obviously the best place to be is in pole position but I know my task and I feel pretty pumped and probably very exciting for the guys back home, especially the guys at Felix in Bergen. So yeah, it's a nice thing. Good luck Andreas. Thank you. He's as tense as hell. So am I. I know you guys will be at home. I know you will be watching in Bergen. Timmy Hansen's with Neil now. Timmy, last thoughts before the last race of the season. It's a crucial one. Let's get it. Good luck. There they are, bottom right of your screen. 208 points to Timmy Hansen, 206 to Andreas Bakkerud. A two-point differential between them. Kevin Hansen is 11 points back and therefore he is out of championship contention. I can't believe it's come down to this. There's Bakkerud too. Hansen versus Bakkerud on the front row of the last final of the year. I hope you're feeling it as much as we are. Let's settle the 2019 FIA World Rallycross Championship. Timmy Hansen versus Andreas Bakkerud on the front row. Just two points separate them. Niklas Grönholm and Kevin Hansen on row two. And on row three it's Tim Asjanov and Timo Scheider. The marshals leave the grid. Six cars are about to for the last time this year. It's incredible to settle the title like this. Anti-lag on, eyes on the lights, eyes on the prize. 40 qualifying rounds, 50 semifinals, 10 finals and it all comes down to this. It's a great start on the front row for Bakkerud and Hansen. Bakkerud's got him at start. Timmy Hansen moves across. He takes the lead immediately. Timmy Hansen right underneath that trainer car. Scheider trying to go around the outside. Bakkerud gets the whole shot. Hansen is right up underneath him. Grönholm's there too. Scheider runs deep going to try and get past Kevin. Hansen drops a P4. Scheider could get him over the jump. No he doesn't. Scheider goes backwards. Bakkerud leads from Timmy Hansen. Grönholm is in behind him. How's it stand? Bakkerud would win the World Rallycross Championship but he's got to win this race first. Unbelievable start by Andreas. He knew what he had to do. He didn't crack under the pressure. He nailed it in the semi. Now he's nailed it here. Hansen up the inside. Hansen up the inside of the hairpin. Bakkerud's in the wall. Hansen spins. He's in the dirt. Kevin goes the other way. Andreas Bakkerud has probably crossed the championship in that bottom hairpin. Grönholm leads. Bakkerud is there. Oh my goodness me. Both the Hansen cars spanning the dirt at the bottom of the hill. Timmy's still going around. Timmy's back in. Timmy's back in at P5. He's a long way down in P5. The Hansen's up in the spotter's tower on the radio. Has it all gone wrong at the last minute? Grönholm leads from Andreas Bakkerud. You can hear the crowd have gone mad. The race to go on longer after all the build-up but there's four laps to go. This isn't over yet. Yeah you don't know what damage Andreas picked up. It could have been something. He might have a puncture. You never know. Could have broken the steering. It could be anything. It's uh Scheider's gone to the Joker. So Scheider's gone Joker and Timmy Hansen has it. Kevin Hansen went Joker. Timmy's getting a drop right back when he takes the Joker. Timmy Hansen and Andreas Bakkerud. Timmy had a look up the inside of Andreas. Don't forget he made the move down at the bottom hairpin so they were side by side down. What's your take on it? What's your take on it? I mean you have to say it's a bit of a race against today. Andreas run wide. Fair enough for Timmy to go for the gap but you can't expect them to both just you know roll over and give it up. But no one's going to give up. This is the world championship in one race. It's a world championship in four minutes 15. Scheider with a problem. Timo Scheider's pulled off to the side of the track. He's not going to get the result he wanted on his birthday. Andreas Bakkerud has four laps to go. Three laps to go now. He's ticking them off to make his dreams come true. We're watching the timing screen to see if any kind of a penalty is going to come up. Gromit to the right hander. Niklas Granov's out front. We said that we had our money on him. Go Dan. This isn't over yet. This isn't over yet. I mean Tim Asianov, Joker and Bakkerud hasn't. If he drops behind Tim Asianov, Timmy could still be on to win this by one point. Oh my goodness me. Incredible spot by Dan Brooke. Bakkerud has still got to beat Tim Asianov. Tim Asianov could make the difference in the World Rallycross Championship. So Granov leads. Bakkerud, is he nursing a damaged car? Is Tim Asianov going to beat him? Timmy Hansen goes into the Joker lap now. The Hansen to be doing the maths as well as Soarer. Look on Dan's face of utter panic as he's figuring it out. So Timmy Hansen, we think, well okay, so we're thinking they're equal on points now. So it might be at the moment then that Timmy Hansen would still win the championship if they come together. Let me see. So it's two points back. Bakkerud would only be getting five. Timmy Hansen would be getting four, three. It'd be two points. It means they're equal. Yes. So Bakkerud won't. They'll be equal and Timmy will win it on count back. This is just incredible. I mean, look at them. They're trying to work it out on the spotter's tower, Dan. We were all working for it versus Tim Asianov. If Tim Asianov gets him, he definitely isn't going to have enough. He's going to try and win. He's going to come down front. So he comes out in front of Tim. Tim has got a problem. Front right tyre is smoking. Bakkerud through the chicane towards turn one. So Niklas Gronholm out front. Timmy Hansen in fourth place. He's going to have enough. He's going to fight back from that spin. It should be enough to win him the World Rallycross Championship. Timmy can just cruise at this point. He can just cruise it. Does he know that? Surely they're on the radio, Tim. Surely they've worked out. They must have looked at the points. Our predictor said it was one point, but it wasn't. We've reset it. It's not. It's equal. Niklas Gronholm coming around the joker lap into the last corner. Gronholm took a win earlier on this year in Norway, but it was given to him by the stewards. This is a proper win for Niklas Gronholm. Andreas Bakkerud's going to cross the line in P2, and it isn't going to be enough. Back across in second, third place for Tim Asianov. Timmy Hansen crosses the line in fourth, and with that will become the FIA World Rallycross Champion on count back. Finish level on points, and Timmy will win, and they're still not sure. That's what we think here. You have to bear with us. The graphics changed twice in that race. We think Hansen's the World Champion. If it's on count back and they're equal on points, Timmy Hansen is the World Rallycross Champion. It is. Hansen into the donuts. He wins the 2019 title at equal on points, but Hansen has more wins. Kevin Hansen's got the message too. The brothers are doing donuts together in Turn 1. Incredible. Incredible. Bakkerud thought he'd done enough. We thought he'd done enough. Just looking at the commentary position. Oh, Bakkerud's got his hands on his helmet. He needed to beat Gronholm. Our points, yeah, apologies for the confusion. Our points showed us he had one point, and then when we, it was recalculated after the moves. Timmy Hansen, there's Kevin out of the car. Each of them, each of the positions changes the points. Oh, I can't believe it. Timmy Hansen is the 2019 FIA World Rallycross Champion. He would have thought it was over. He was in the wall. It was over. It was gone. He made the move on Bakkerud. If he hadn't made the move on Bakkerud, Bakkerud could have won the championship because Gronholm got him. Timmy Hansen rolling back to the paddock, to the celebrations. Niklas Gronholm wins the final round of the World Rallycross Championship. Andreas Bakkerud is second. Timmy Hansen is in fourth. Tim Asjanov third. Look at the points difference, plus five to plus three. Two points. That was the gap. They finished the season level on points, and it goes back to wins. Timmy Hansen wins because he's won four times this year. It just seems. You couldn't write it. There's the release, finally. He's kept a lid on it for weeks and weeks and weeks. Look, Gronholm smiles now. Tim Asjanov's there. That's why he's smiling. This didn't exist for me. To come past the final, it wasn't on my mind. I'm in shock. I was so focused. I think I put in the performance of my lifetime this weekend. Now I'm in shock. What a season it's been. To end it, we are world champions. At the end of an incredible season, after 10 rounds, after those 196 races, Timmy Hansen and Andreas Bakkerud finish exactly equal on points. Timmy Hansen becomes the World Rallycross Champion by virtue of taking four wins to Bakkerud's one this season. Kevin Hansen is in third. It's a double podium for the Hansen's in the World Championship, as well as the team's championship. Niklas Gronholm, look, fourth place in the standings. He missed two events this year with an appendicitis. Tim Asjanov moves up to fifth. He won back in Belgium. Probably my favorite winner of the year. Balmanis has had an incredibly consistent season. He gets sixth in the season. Markland up into seventh. Liam Doran in eighth place.