Rallycross: Roberts Vītols makes his Supercar debut (Photo)

This weekend and on Monday, Latvian rallycross driver Roberts Vītols will make his debut in the four-wheel drive Supercar class, competing in the opening rounds of the British Rallycross Championship at Lidenhill.

Vītols is competing in a Citroen C4 owned by the legendary Doran family. The first stage will take place on Saturday, where Roberts’ four-wheel drive start is the championship organizers’ promised reward for winning last year’s British Rallycross Championship Super 1600 class. On Monday, when it is a Bank Holiday in Britain, Vītols is scheduled to compete in the second stage, already within the framework of an additional agreement.

Roberts and the Provento Racing team have been in the UK since the first half of the week, during which time they have been measuring the seat position in a Citroen C4 and conducting start training. 11 Supercar drivers have entered the competition, including internationally known Ollie O’Donovand, Andy Scott, Derek Tohill, and others. Vītols will be in the same camp during the competition with British champion Mark Donnelly and Liam Doran, who is competing in the Retro 4WD class with a wild Ford RS200. This allows you to see the work of a world-class driver before the competition and between races.

The Latvian team, led by its drivers, perceives the first race as a well-earned opportunity and a school. Roberts’ father Uģis Vītols explains: “The fact that we are currently in this big drivers’ league, seeing the work that is being done and how it is being done, is definitely special and important for us, a direction in which we have been working for many years. It is clear that in the first stage, we do not set ourselves tasks in terms of a result or place; we need to understand and learn, absorb all the possible information that we can get. And there is a lot of it. It is nice that patron Pat Dorans throws out phrases every now and then that our driver understands what he is doing and quickly perceives what is happening. Let’s see how it goes on Saturday, and from that we will build plans for Monday’s stage!”

At the time of writing, Roberts has completed free practice, showing ninth place both in the entire 94 (!) driver list and in the Supercar class, 1.4 seconds behind leader Derek Tohill. However, the first qualifying session was unsuccessful, as the car suffered a turbine failure at the start, after which Roberts left the track at the end of the first lap. The team is changing the turbine in preparation for the second session.