Mettet World Rallycross: Kristoffersson edges ahead of Solberg

The duo split the fastest times in the two practice sessions, with Solberg fastest on Friday evening and Kristoffersson narrowly beating his team-mate by 0.206 seconds on Saturday morning.

Kristofferson converted pole position to win the third race of Q1 to set the best time, only to be beaten by Solberg in the final race after the Norwegian used his final-lap joker to go 0.131s quicker.

Their Polos again battled each other in Q2. Solberg led from the front and took his joker on the final lap, while his team-mate had done so on the second lap, and in a dash to the finish line Kristofferson set the fastest lap ahead of Solberg.

As a result of setting the fastest lap latest in the day, Kristoffersson sealed the overnight top spot.

"This is a really good start. We had a slightly different approach to this race, we tried a lot of things in practice," said Kristoffersson. "Both me and Petter tried some different setups on the car. In Q1 we found really good speed, I was actually a little bit surprised that the speed was so good.

Championship leader Mattias Ekstrom ran wide over the jump after the first corner in Q2, narrowly avoiding contact with Timmy Hansen and ended up 11th on the timesheets - finishing the day seventh.

Team Peugeot-Hansen driver Sebastien Loeb had a competitive day one, finishing second to team-mate Timmy Hansen in their Q1 race. He then lead through his Q2 encounter to be third fastest, ending the day in the same position overall.

Hansen would drop to sixth overall after his Peugeot 208 was hit from behind by the Ford Focus of Andreas Bakkerud early in the last race of the day and finished 13^th fastest.

It meant that Bakkerud would initially end the day behind Loeb in fourth, but he was later handed a five-second penalty for his contact with Hansen and dropped to eleventh overall.

His demotion meant that MJP Racing Team Austria driver Kevin Eriksson ended the day fourth ahead of Bakkerud's Hoonigan Racing Division team owner Ken Block in fifth.

Watch Sunday's World RX action from Belgium live on Sunday in the UK from 13:00 on Motorsport.tv, channel 447 on Sky and 545 on Virgin Media.