Mud & Guts - Rallycross at Winton

Rallycross is a newish sport to the Australian Motorsport landscape, but its roots run back into the 70’s with the likes of Peter Brock.

The sport has always been big in Europe and has over the last few years grown into its own series in the USA, Red Bull Global RallyCross, after it debuted a the Summer XGames in LA. Who can forget Sebastien Loeb tearing up the car park of the Staples Centre in his Citroen a few years back?

After a couple of failed attempts by various different companies over the past few years, all that never really ever went anywhere, there is finally a Rallycross season running in Australia. It's the brain child of Justin Dowel, Will Orders and Robbie Bolger, all men with strong motorsport backgrounds.

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The entry lists at each event are growing rapidly.

The series, which is called RX Australia, has just run its 4th round of the season at Winton. The series kicked off this year at the Marulan Driver training circuit in NSW and has since run another event at Marulan and at the Stanthorpe Circuit in QLD. The entry lists at each event are growing rapidly.

The series is split into 2WD and AWD classes with a dedicated Excel class added at the recent Winton round. The Winton circuit used parts of the official race track, with the races starting on the traditional start/finish line, with the field heading down to turn 3 and into 4, before turning right just before turn 5 and heading into the short dirt section - the cars re-join the tarmac section of the track just after pit exit and head into the turn 1 / 2 section to complete the lap.

The Excel series is, of course, a thing.

The dirt section all includes a extra section called the 'Joker lap' that all competitors must take once per race.

The Events are split into a series of heats for each class, with the top performers in each class then heading into a combined AWD and 2WD Superfinal at the end of the event.

The dirt section is where most of the fun is had.

At the recent Winton round it was a whos who of Australian Rallying in the AWD class with regular competitors - Justin Dowel in his awesome Hyundai i20 RX running alongside Will Orders in his impressive Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution - up against two other great names in rallying, Steve Glenney and Darren Windus. Glenney was running a Lancer Evolution and Windus was running a VW Polo.

Justin Dowel in his awesome Hyundai i20 RX.

In two wheel drive, Darrens son Arron and Justins son Troy battled it out in their Mazda 2 and Ford Fiesta respectively. Also running in the 2WD rear wheel class was Matt Lee, the co driver of Justin Dowels from his rallying days, Lee was running his Holden Commodore that he has been running in states series rounds.

The Winton round has so many entries that it was split over two days, with the classes split into Excel, Front 2WD, Rear 2WD, AWD and Open AWD. The first day was delayed by Fog and so on the second day they had extra heats to squeeze in.

Commodores get no shortage of representation in the 2WD class.

There was some close racing during the heats, but also some biff and barge as quite a few cars were looking worse for wear at the end of Sunday.

Quite a few cars were looking worse for wear at the end of Sunday.

It all came down to just two Superfinals on Sunday afternoon, the combined 2WD and AWD finals with a strong field in both.

Some classics find a second life as track-day weekenders.

In 2WD, Mike Conway and Troy Dowel were quick out of the gate with Conway charging away until the race was Red Flagged when Arron Windus got pushed out onto the grass and clouted the tire wall.

Would it be a rally event without a WRX?

In AWD it was again a one sided affair as Justin Dowel lept away from the start in the Hyundai, was never challenged, and took out the win. The battle to watch was the tight racing between Darren Windus and Steve Glenney with the two drivers bumper to bumper for most of the race, with Glenney keeping Windus at bay until the very end. The savage rock hits to the Polo's windscreen give you a feel for the intensity out on the track.