Preview: British Rallycross ready to go!
This year’s 5 Nations competition gets going at Lydden Hill this weekend. By Hal Ridge
Midway through last year, sceptics suggested that those winning titles amid the coronavirushit season would hold a different place in the history books compared to the winners of previous crowns.
Now, five months into the 2021 campaign, Lewis Hamilton and
Sebastien Ogier are both seven-time World champions in Formula 1 and the World Rally Championship respectively and those battles were won without question. Mark Donnelly joined the list of 22 British Rallycross champions last year too and, despite winning the biggest prize in UK rallycross from only three rounds (all at Lydden Hill), his place on the champions list is held in the same regard as the majority of his predecessors.
Donnelly’s British Rallycross Championship 5 Nations Trophy crown aboard LD Motorsports’ Citroen DS3 was hard fought. On the reigning champion’s return in the same car this year, he will face stiffer opposition.
Three former champions will contest the full campaign, with six-time title winner Julian Godfrey the most decorated. Should Godfrey claim the biggest prize this year, in his now aging Ford Fiesta, he will be the outright most successful title-winner in the series’ history. He will edge clear of long-time colleague Dermot Carnegie, although the Irish driver remains well clear in the alltime winners list with 32 victories to his credit, 10 more than Godfrey.
The other former title winner, Ollie O’Donovan, will race a brand new
Proton Iriz RX in the series this year derived from a Mellors Elliot Motorsport R5 rally machine. But, with the car yet to be completed, the London-based Irishman, who claimed the trophy in 2007, will campaign his faithful Ford Fiesta in the opening double-header of the year at Lydden Hill this weekend.
Donnelly has four rallycross Supercar starts to his name and one win at Lydden Hill, while Godfrey has incredibly only scored one of his 22 career wins at the circuit. O’Donovan, who has 14 total wins, has been far more successful at the Kent venue with five victories to his credit in British RX events at the oldest rallycross circuit in the world.
Steve Hill is also a former British rallycross event-winner and has twice won at Lydden. Two of the names set to return this year – Andy Scott (Peugeot 208) and Kevin Procter (Ford Fiesta) – can both be considered title contenders should they race in the full campaign and are tied on seven career wins apiece.
Scott’s Albatec team won the
British crown with triple British Rally champion Mark Higgins in 2018 and, following a period on the sidelines from driving himself, two-time Lydden Hill victor Scott will drive the sole Albatec Racing Supercar entry this season.
The year after Higgins’title win, European champion Derek Tohill raced in his so-far only British RX campaign (see sidebar) and, armed with his Olsbergs MSE-built Ford
Fiesta, only just lost out on the crown to Godfrey in the last knockings of the year, in part thanks to a broken windscreen washer pipe in the final weekend.
Three-time Supernational Rallycross champion Tristan Ovenden and former Supernational racer Mike Sellar both graduated to Supercar in last year in Citroen DS3s and have made steps over the winter to take a performance leap forward. Roger Thomas (Ford Fiesta) and Simon Horton (Subaru Impreza) were among those to be forced onto the sidelines last year due to reasons surrounding the pandemic, but will return to action this season.
Reigning Super1600 title winner Roberts Vitols will use his prize drive to race an LD Motorsports Citroen C4 Supercar in his top-flight debut this weekend, while Connor McCloskey
(Ford Focus) and Oliver Bennett
(BMW Mini) will make selected appearances. From the second round at Mondello Park in Ireland in July, a number of Irish campaigners will join the field including Declan Kelly (Ford Fiesta) and Tommy Graham (Ford Fiesta).
Electric cars developed by Austrian firm STARD and first run in the Projekt E support series to the World Rallycross Championship last year will be thrown into the mix in the Supercar division. Natalie Barratt and Chris Hoy are working on plans to race the machines which produce equivalent performance to conventional internal combustion engine Supercars during the season.
The 5 Nations British Rallycross Championship package also includes the two-wheel-drive Supernational class, Super 1600, single-make categories for Junior racers, Suzuki Swifts, BMW Minis and RX150 buggies, while the Retro Rallycross class caters for period machinery and the new Electro category has been introduced for production-based EVs.