Long-time rallycross journalist Hal Ridge will make his supercar debut at the wheel of the Team RX Racing Ford Focus. He will race during round 3 of the British Rallycross Championship. John McGuinness will make his Supercar debut the previous day in the same car.
Both McGuinness and Ridge have previously raced for Team RX Racing in the RX150 class. Back in August, McGuinness made his car racing debut and after qualifying 4th raced to second place. The 23-time Isle Of Man TT winner crossed the line in third but a track limits time penalty promoted him to 2nd. He had been due to make his supercar debut in Scotland before that round was postponed and later cancelled. Ridge has had much less racing experience but has been in and around rallycross for over 10 years. During that time he has raced in the European Rallycross Championship in the Super 1600 class, tested several cars including Supercars, Retro Supercars and Projekt E’s test car. His most recent racing experience came at Pembrey last year in the RX150 class. On the opening day he qualified first with a heat win. He went on to finish 3rd that day with a second place finish on the Sunday rounding out the weekend.
Both will race along Ollie O’Donovan as the London-based Irish driver looks to become a two time champion. At the opening round of the season O’Dononvan finished 3rd and currently sits on 10 points, 4 back from championship leader Mark Donnelly. He will continue to drive the Ford Fiesta Supercar that he raced at round 1. His son, Patrick O’Donovan will become the youngest ever driver in the RX150 class. After a poor start to the season in the Junior category the decision was made to give the young driver RX150 experience. He will contest a full 2021 campaign in the RX150 class driving a Team RX Racing buggy.
Image Credit: Overtake Motorsport
Oliver Bennett will also return to the series after being disqualified from round 1 of the season. The World Rallycross driver raced his BMW Mini as a guest entry. However, moments before the semi-finals he was disqualified from the event for using the wrong specification fuel. He was open to returning to the championship but admitted it would not be in his BMW Mini unless the rules about guest entries changed.
Team RX Racing have recently put up their 2 Ford Supercars for sale and it is currently unknown if O’Donovan will continue to race into 2021. Tony Bardy, who has previously raced in the series, prepares the 2 Fords for the team. O’Donovan has used his Fiesta in the European Rallycross championship in 2017 with a best result of 3rd.
Action for this weekend’s event starts on Saturday morning and goes into the night under floodlights. Due to the series gaining elite status spectators are unable to attend with races set to be posted online after they are run.
Feature Image Credit: Overtake Motorsport
