SILVERSTONE’S NEW RALLYCROSS ERA
With three weeks togo, silver stone’ s brand new rally cross track is ready for action. by Matt james
T
he new rallycross circuit at Silverstone will be used for the first time in three weeks when it hosts the opening round of the British Rallycross Championship.
It will be a dress rehearsal for the arrival of the World Rallycross Championship in May, the headline event which will be a real test for the brand-new venue.
Silverstone bosses could more-or-less start with a blank sheet of paper with the design. The area behind The Wing housed the Stowe Circuit, which has been used for school sessions and minor events before. It was a perfect site for a purpose-built track.
World Rallycross Championship coordinator Tim Whittington was a prime mover in pulling the new circuit together, and he says that initial discussions at the Autosport International Show in 2016 had identified the Stowe track as ideal.
“One of the key assets of having the Stowe Circuit area is that the rest of the venue can remain unaffected by rallycross at Silverstone,” explains Whittington. “We go to some other places, like Hockenheim and Barcelona, and we are compromised. While it is great to have these iconic tracks, access can be limited because you are on what is, for the rest of the year, a race circuit. At Silverstone it is self-contained. Also, it means that in the future, bosses at Silverstone can add the rallycross track to its driving experiences if it wants and it can also be used for testing – which is something quite rare in the UK. It is an asset.”
Once the site had been identified, there was the job of designing the track. While the layout was drawn with a free hand, there were some aspects that had to be considered to start with.
“Because rallycross starts with five cars side-by-side, there is a minimum track width of 14.5 metres to begin with, and that stretches for 100 metres,” explains Whittington. “That means we had to have the startline on the straight behind The Wing paddock. It is an old runway, and it was the only part that could accommodate that necessity.”
Beyond that, there are other factors that have to be featured on a World Rally cross Championship-standard circuit. There is a requirement that at least 40 per cent of the track must be on a loose surface – but Silverstone has gone beyond that and will feature 60 per cent on the loose. Then there are the dimensions of the track itself. Rules dictate that a circuit should be between 800 metres and 1400 metres. A lap of the Silverstone track will measure 972m.
“It is quite a short lap, but that is deliberate,” says Whittington. “Many of the newer tracks on the calendar are at the upper end of the lap length requirement, but we wanted to create something a little bit different. Also, the grip on the loose surfaces change from venue to venue and that is important. If they were all the same, then the engineers would quickly get a handle on car set-ups and there wouldn’t be much of a challenge.
“Some of the older venues, like Estering in Germany, are proper old school rallycross circuits and some of the newer ones are smooth. Silverstone will have a hard surface in general, and that will present a different feeling for the drivers.”
There will be a 2500-seat grandstand alongside the main start straight, towards the first corner, and race control will also be created in that area. The WRX paddock will be laid out in the concrete area behind The Wing pits, while the International Circuit, which circles the Stowe venue, will be used by other elements of the weekend’s festival of racing called Speed Machine.
Silverstone’s managing director Stuart Pringle has also been one of the driving forces behind the initiative to bring the World Rallycross Championship to the F1 venue. The track design firm Driven was employed to devise the layout.
Pringle explains that there were several factors that he particularly wanted to be included in the blueprint of the track.
“The Silverstone F1 circuit is known for being fast and flowing, and although the rallycross track is much shorter, we wanted to include that culture and I think we have done that,” he says. “Also, we wanted there to be a signature shot, an iconic image that photographers could get so we placed the jump very carefully. We wanted a shot with the cars in the air with the suspension fully extended, just like the 1000 Lakes Rally. We have created it so that The Wing is in the background of the shot .”
The British RX Championship round on March 17 is likely to get several visitors from the World Rallycross Championship looking for a bit of handy testing before their showpiece event in late May.
“Drivers are always going to have their own views,” says Whittington. “We’ll have to wait and see what their reaction is, but I think it will be a great little circuit – it has all kinds of corners on it, from slow ones to fast ones and there is the jump as well, which is an unusual feature for national runners.
“It is a double-edged sword opening with a higher-profile event like a British Rallycross meeting.
“It is a one-day event and the timetable is full-on, so the pressure will be on the organisers straight away for things to run smoothly. But, because it is a packed programme and a top-level championship, it will be a good dry run to make sure that all the systems are in place to cope with a round of the World Championship.”
The proof of the new rallycross circuit will come very soon indeed, and it is an exciting new development for rallycross in the UK. ■