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By now, it’s safe to say that the Grand Prix de Trois-Rivières is North America’s best established rallycross event. Since its debut in 2014, the race has taken many different forms—even switching to the winter and running on the ice at one point—before returning this weekend with RallyX Americas as its inaugural championship decider.

With such a star-studded field on site this weekend, many of the top Hypercar drivers have already raced here. And each and every one of them is thrilled about being in the city again, from tonight’s downtown parade to being in the heart of the community for the weekend.

“The atmosphere is incredible,” says Timmy Hansen, who won the final here in the summer of 2016 and is the series’ most recent race winner at Eldora in June. “It’s a city race, middle of Trois-Rivières. We have done parades in the downtown. It’s a beautiful city with lots of nice restaurants and everything.”

“Trois-Rivières is a really nice little city, especially in summer, so it’s gonna be fun to drive there again,” adds Robin Larsson, the incoming Hypercar points leader and winner of the season opener at Crandon. “It was a long time ago I drove here in summer, 2018 I think? I think driving in cities is what we need to try to do as much as possible!”

But it’s not just the atmosphere that drivers are excited about. Trois-Rivières has always drawn rave reviews from drivers for its layout, which some say rivals the permanent circuits that have existed in Europe for decades.

“Trois-Rivières is one of the few new-built rallycross tracks that I enjoyed driving back in the heyday of World RX,” says Kevin Eriksson, whose best finish here was fourth in 2017. “So I look forward to being back. It has an extremely high speed start/finish straight and a really full send gravel part in the inside of the hippodrome. I think that’s what I mainly like, that it’s still got some proper gravel to it where you need to push to be fast.”

“The track almost feels purpose built because it’s such a good layout,” Hansen agrees. “It really feels like what a rallycross track should be with 50-50 gravel and tarmac. It’s very hard to get the setup right because you have those two different sections of the lap, but it’s about compromise, and we all know that in rallycross.”

Hansen’s previous results here are the best of the group, as he also took a second place finish here in 2018, and he’s especially excited to see what the First Corner FC1 Hypercar can do on the streets.

“It’s going to be very special,” he concludes. “This car will be incredibly fast down the street. We were doing 200km/h just with the Supercars, so I’m excited to see how fast this one goes, if we use all of the push to pass down that straight. The field is competitive. It’s fast drivers, and everyone knows all of the tricks in rallycross, including me.

“So it will be a tough race, but it means a lot to me to come back, and doing it with RallyX Americas feels perfect.”