Lydden anounces Legend Festival. Rally drivers hone their skills in rallycross.

25 October / The Lydden Legend Festival will take place in July next year borrowing the concept of the Loheac Legend event that took place in May of this year. Scheduled for 20-21 July the event will feature rallycross and rally cars in ‘demonstration races’. Rallycross Legend Show creator Philippe Tollemer said: “My secret dream was for this concept to be exported to other countries, so I was immediately excited about the plans for the Lydden Legend Festival.”

• Lydden has recently opened its new access road. On the drawing board since McLaren’s days as owner in the 1990s, the new road is to the south of the original circuit entrance.

28 October / Irish rally driver Aoife Raftery will race an RX150 at Lyddenb this weekend. The 22-year-old is a member of the Motorsport Ireland Academy and has taken part in the Junior European Rally Championship. “There are a lot of new challenges but I’m ready to take them on and I’m really looking forward to it. This is a great place for me to both have fun and to also work on my car control in something that is very different to what I’m used to,” she said.
*This weekend’s 5 Nations BRX season closing event at Lydden includes an entry for Liam Doran in one of Mikko Ikonen’s Hyundai i20s and for Hungary’s father-and-son Weiszt family who will give their two ex-GCK Renault Meganes a first competitive outing at Lydden.

31 October / After a break from competing on a regular basis, Gigi Galli is set to drive his Kia Rio Supercar in the final round of the Italian championship this weekend. RX Italia concludes with a double-header at Maggiora, postponed from a couple of weeks ago by bad weather.

31 October / Brian Deegan will race a DRR/JC car in the Nitrocross event at Phoenix next weekend.

31 October / Finland’s Rallicross SM series publishes date for its 2024 series. There will be five events as usual for the short Finnish summer. The proposed calendar includes the mainstream rallycross classes (Supercar, SRC/Open [Supernational], Autokrossi and the growing V1600 class) on Saturday, with Sunday reserved for Cross Car competition. The proposed events are: 18.-19 May, Ahvenisto. 15.-16 June, Kouvola. TBA, Noormark. 17.-18 August, Oulu. 7.-8 September, Joensuu.

Also / Rising rally star Max McRae drove in his first rallycross event at Knockhill in Scotland on October 22. Racing a Cross Car in the final round of the BTRDA Clubmans Rallycross Championship, McRae won the class while SuperModified race Fred Ling secured the overall championship title after a tie-break with historic class racer Lee Wood. McRae’s father Alister
raced once in World RX at Loheac in 2017 and previously tried a Citroen Xsara at Mondello Park while Colin McRae sampled Dermot Carnegie’s Ford Focus supercar at Punchestown Rallysprint.

This weekend / The 5 Nations British championship concludes with what is now becoming its usual season-closer at Lydden’s fireworks event. Racing is over two days and there is a fireworks display on Saturday evening. The RX Italia season has its delayed finale at Maggiora, also across two days and the accompanying 4×4 festival means there is no charge for admisssion.

pics: World RX, Red Bull media pool, 5NBRX, Lydden Hill, RXitalia,