Round 5 of the FIA World Rallycross Championship was held at Lydden Hill Race Circuit in Kent back in May. The event was not only the Great British round of the championship but was also hosting a celebration of 50 years of Rallycross.
Back in February 1967, Lydden Hill saw the very first Rallycross event take place and the circuit is considered to be the home of Rallycross, something that was evident by the attendance and atmosphere over the weekend.
Over the weekend there were demonstration races with cars from across the 50 years taking part including the Vic Elford Porsche 911, the winner of the first Rallycross event on 4th February 1967, and other cars from the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.
This round saw the table’s turn of who would be taking the lead for the rest of the championship with the PSRX Volkswagon Sweden team dominating from this round onwards.
Throughout the qualifying stages it was team mates Petter Solberg and Johan Kristofferson who topped the tables, apart from qualifying round four when it was Timmy Hansen who gave himself a boost to make it through to the semi-finals.
Heading into this weekend, Solberg has made it known over his social media accounts how much winning this round meant to him and how determined he was to make it the case. This certainly made him the man to beat.
The reason why this was so important to him, and for many others too, was that the 2017 Great Britain World Rallycross event was to be the last time that Lydden Hill would be the host, with a move to Silverstone in 2018 having been announced.
Again, in the semi-finals Solberg and Kristofferson topped each of their races, setting up a head-to-head for the final. However, in the final we saw Solberg at his best and he was certainly driving like a man on a mission timing his joker lap to perfection he took the win untroubled.
You could tell how much the venue and the event meant to the fans. One of the best things about Lydden Hill is that no matter where you stand around the circuit you have a full view of the whole track, and everywhere you looked there were at least three layers of spectators watching. It has been deemed controversial the change of venue for the Great British round of the WRX but what was undoubted was that Lydden Hill certainly went out in style. Hopefully somewhere in the future the event will be back at the home of Rallycross.
