Marcus Grönholm made it two straight wins in the young Global Rallycross Championship season. The two-time WRC Champion got maximum performance and maximum points from his Best Buy Mobile Ford Fiesta Mk7 at the Hoon Ka-Boom event held at Texas Motor Speedway in conjunction with an IZOD Indy Car event. The final was a ‘third time’s the charm’ affair as three red flags put a hitch in the proceedings. The first attempt to run the final brought out the red flag after a stalled jump attempt by Sverre Isachsen in his Subaru on lap 4 of 6. It was not the only appearance for the red flag though, and the third re-start saw Marcus follow a committed strategy of diving in for the shorter joker lap off the line, while his key opponents, Tanner Foust and Brian Deegan, stayed out on a full lap and opted to play their joker later. The strategy and the committed pace of the Finn saw him open up some daylight which he maintained until the checkered flags dropped. “So, what a tough day, I must say. I knew at the start of the week that Texas would be all-different to Charlotte and it would take a whole lot more heart to win here. But we did it and it is a great, great feeling. The seeding and the heats seemed pretty straightforward, just keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble, but the final, well I knew with guys like Tanner and Brian that I’d need to find something special to stay ahead of them. I had a bad start first time round and maybe not a perfect start for the second time, so I guess I was fortunate that the flags came out twice. On the final start, it was perfect; we kept it all together and got over the line first.” Brian Deegan joined Grönholm and Foust on the Hoon Ka-Boom podium. The next stop for the GRC is the 2012 X Games.