Doran: A man with the inbuilt passion for rallycross

Having watched rallycross at Lydden Hill in his youth, it was rallying in which Pat Doran competed in his early career, before switching to rallycross.

Aside from winning four British Championship titles (2002, ’05, ’09-’10), and the British Rallycross Grand Prix in 2004, arguably his single biggest achievement was finishing second in the European Rallycross Championship in 1992, his only real fulltime tilt at the discipline’s top level.

Driving a Ford RS200, Doran was third in the season-opener at Lydden behind winner Martin Schanche and local star Will Gollop, before again finishing on the podium in the Finnish round. But, it was at Bergerac in France where Doran would claim victory, ahead of Jean-luc Pailler and Francois Delecour, the latter drafted in as one of the stand-in drivers for the suspended Schanche. Second place at Mondello Park kept him in the title hunt, but by the end of the year it was Gollop who lifted the crown. The Doran name is now better known for Pat’s son Liam becoming one of the first top-flight professional rallycross drivers in 2011, and is still racing in World RX today.

Doran Sr rates his 1992 French win as a career highlight, but asked for memories of racing at Lydden, that 1992 podium doesn’t feature.

“When Liam and I were both driving Ford Fiesta Supercars for my team, we finished first and second in an event at Lydden,” he says. “I’ve never tried so hard to win a race in my life, and probably drove a lot faster than my talent would ever have allowed me to. There’s still an argument about who won because he didn’t cross the line, he was on the grass. Another one at Lydden was a great race I had with John Haffey in his Escort and me in my RS200. He won and I was a close second, but it pushed the pair of us ever so hard. So I didn’t win either of those, but I remember them well.”