European Rallycross, Lydden Hill - March 31st & April 1st 2013
 

Just two weeks after the British Rallycross Championship kicks off, the European Championship follows, hurrah! :smile:

Sunday April 8th & Bank Holiday Monday April 9th is the first Round of the European Rallycross Championship. I'm sure most of you are au fait with rallycross, but if not it involves grids of 4 -6 cars racing round mixed surface tracks. The races are short (3 laps for heats, 4 laps for finals) so you get to see a lot of races in one day. Plus if its a boring race, its over quickly! The cars in the top (Supercar) class include a lot of WRC-derived machines, all of which are running 550+BHP!

The level of competition in the European Championship is very high, with a number of works teams and some very skilled drivers. The series has a new backer this year and looks to be getting bigger; Petter Solberg is a new addition to the Championship and he will be racing against his brother Henning at Lydden as well, so it should be a good one!

If you haven't been to Lydden before then its a great circuit to watch as you can pretty much see the whole circuit from any point on the track. Its just down the road from Dover; so to get there is only a quick blast round the M25 and down the M2 or M20 for most folk! :doubleup:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=Lydden+Hill,+Wootton,+Kent+CT4,+Unite d+Kingdom&ie=UTF8&geocode=FejXDAMdIJcSAA&split=0&s ll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=6.881357,14.941406&hq=&hnear=Lydden+ Hill,+Wootton,+Kent,+United+Kingdom&z=14

Racing kicks off at around 10 and normally ends around half 4 - 5; even if its busy, you should get out of the circuit pretty quickly, so you haven't got a long crawl home afterwards.

Just to get you in the mood, here's a video from last years European Rallycross Supercar final at Lydden:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYLsQqNfLF0

Sunday will be the first set of heats, with the rest of the heats and the all important finals on Monday. Pricing for the weekend is as follows:

Sunday £20 (adult).
Monday £25 (adult).
Weekend Camping £5 (per person per night).
Under 12s go free.

(Tickets are cheaper if you buy them in advance http://www.surreyscoobies.co.uk/foru.../icon_wink.gif)

I'm going both days and, at present, I'm unsure how early I'm setting off (probably around 7) which might be a bit early for you guys. Once I have a time though I'll put it up here if anyone wants to convoy down again! http://www.surreyscoobies.co.uk/foru...n_thumbsup.gif

Thanks for heads up just booked up gonna be a good 3 days motorsport sat and sun at btcc and monday at this

No worries! :doubleup: I was considering doing the BTCC on Sunday and Lydden on the Monday, but I think I'll save the BTCC for later in the year and do both days at Lydden.

Only been to lydden hill once at bhp show last year and never seen rallycross before(seen nearly every other type of motorsport) so looking forward to this and lydden is such a great place to spectate at as where ever you go you have great views of the track

If you like your motorsport I doubt you'll go home from the rallycross disappointed. There are few sounds in motorsport as good as a pack of rallycross Supercars sitting on the line waiting to go!

yep we do love our motorsport and im sure we wont be dissapointed :doubleup:

Well its far from confirmed, but we might (and I emphasize the MIGHT) see a certain Mr Block on track...

Interesting.... keep us updated mate :)

Just booked three tickets for the Monday. Even the missus is up for it. Now gotta save for fuel for the car to get there! Will be nice to give it a decent run... :drive:

Sadly, it seems there will be no Ken Block. Last week he unveiled a new rallycross car he has had built by M-Sport. It was thought his new car would comply with European regulations (his old one didn't) but, sadly, it doesn't.

Good news is that Petter Solberg has finished building his car; he will be joined by brother Henning Solberg (in a borrowed Eklund Saab 93), Tanner Foust are the rest of the European regulars. It should be a great weekend of racing!

May try and get over for this. My folks are down for the week, so may drag the old man out......

Entry list now up on the FiA website:

http://www.fia.com/news/rx-2013-round-1-entry-list

20 Supercars, 14 Super 1600 and 8 Touring Cars. Not the biggest entry list I've ever seen, but definately one of the best quality. There are at least 10 names you could pick out in the Supercar class as potential winners, and only 6 places in the final, so its going to be close...

Timetable for the weekend currently looks like this:

Sunday 31/03/2013

08:00 Secretariat opens
08:00 - 09h00 Administrative checking/scrutineering
11:00 Competitors' and drivers' briefing
11:30 Drawing lot 1st qualifying heat starting positions
12:30 Practice
14:30 1st qualifying heat - 4 laps
16:05 2nd qualifying heat - 4 laps

Monday 01/04/2013

09:00 - 10h00 Warm-Up - 2 laps
10:15 3rd qualifying heat - 4 laps
11:50 4th qualifying heat - 4 laps
14:30 Drivers' presentation
15:00 Semi-Finals (TC, S1600, SC) - 6 laps
16:15 Finals (TC, S1600, SC) - 6 laps
16:50 Podium Celebration
18:00 Prizegiving

See you tomorrow Steve :doubleup:

Looking forward to this.........

Have a good one guys, was hoping to get along tomorrow but stuff has cropped up.

Hope it stays dry and the sun comes out for you :)

Today was excellent, if tomorrow is more of the same then it should be a cracking day of racing!

Great bit of racing today , shame Liam doran caught his car on fire

Some good racing today,

Steve looked everywhere for you and tried calling your mobile but no joy:-|

It would have been good to see you.

Was you in a scoob, where was you parked, by the toilet block by any chance?

One of them was me! I then moved a bit further down and the bug eye stayed there... Your old exhaust sounded nice on the way there and back though.... :doubleup:

Not a big fan of Liam as a personality, but some spirited driving from him today. Pity that his (and team mate Bakkerud) cars let them down.

I was looking for you as well! I got your voicemail, but couldn't listen to it as the phone kept cutting out on me. When I figured out it was you I tried phoning you and got the same problem. Very annoying.

Tried to phone you about an hour ago but it went to Voicemail: left you a message!

Great day of racing, couple of cracking finals and a bloody good win for Foust . Bit chilly, but nice to see the sun out: even managed to get myself a bit sun burnt!
The bug eye by the toilet in the middle of the field? That was Grahams(bandit) car: I was in the awesome diesel Skoda parked beside it! ;)

Enjoyed today, some photo's here : http://www.southeastscoobies.co.uk/v...854#post157854

No unfortunately I was in a green range rover , (had some work to do after)
Nearly got run over by some one wearing a Ses jumper in a silver car I think lol shouldn't of been standing in the bit where people drive up and down near the hair pin.