World Rallycross Championship R4 2023 – Lydden Hill

[tbtstt]

I have been looking forward to this event for a long time, as it has been four years since World Rallycross has been in the UK and six years since the series was at Lydden.

It was shaping up to be a brilliant weekend… until the Friday before racing, when a fire broke out in one of the World RX team tents. Less than an hour later and pretty much the entirety of that team was destroyed and it was deemed that the top tier of electric cars (RX1E) would not be racing while an investigation into the cause of the fire was ongoing.



The result of the cancellation of the top class was only a net loss of about 10 races over the two days, but it meant that none of the top drivers would hit the track during the weekend. The support classes (electric and petrol) would continue to race but, with the reduction, I was concerned there would be some big gaps in the schedule.



Part of the support package was the Supercar class of the British Championship, which had incorporated the weekend as a round of their 2023 season. After some rapid planning behind the scenes, they turned the event into a double header to give the spectators some extra racing.





There was a bumper entry in the Supercar class, with drivers from Ireland and Europe bringing cars over for the event. Great to see some different machinery in action.





RX2E is the support class for World Rallycross and, although I am not as big a fan of electric racing, I couldn’t deny that the cars were quick and there was some really good scrapping in the class.



It was notable that the “slower” RX2E cars were lapping the circuit just fractions of a second off the time of the petrol Supercars. Makes me wonder just how much quicker the RX1E cars would have been if they were allowed to be used.









Retro Rallycross also had a strong presence, with some classic rallycross machinery running “demos” over the weekend. Some drivers were, er, “demoing” harder than others, with quite a bit of paint traded by the 2WD classic drivers.



The 4WD Retro class included some fantastic cars, but all eyes were on Liam Doran in the family RS200 “Rosie”. He gave the car an absolute thrashing every time he took it out, either winning his race (sorry, “demo”) or retiring with an expired car!

















Tommi Hallman made his RX2E debut at Lydden and astonished everyone by beating the more experienced drivers and winning the class.













In both the wet conditions of Saturday and the dry conditions on Sunday, Patrick O’Donovan absolutely dominated the Supercar class, taking top honours on both days.



Kudos to Lydden Hill and everyone behind the scenes who scrambled to salvage a decent event from the early disaster.

Album of pictures by clicking here, if you want to see more!