Liam Doran faced a tough weekend at the opening round of the 2014 FIA World Rallycross Championship as he and Monster Energy World RX Team team-mate Kryzsztof Skorupski missed out on the first two heats of the weekend.
Despite not running on the Saturday Doran and Skorupski made the most of the remaining two heats on Sunday which say Doran take second place in heat 3 before a misfire dropped him down the order in heat 4 and in to fourth place. Skorupski took an impressive victory in heat 4 after finishing fourth in heat 3.
“We have to count this weekend towards testing and experience for the rest of the season,” said Doran. “Over a lap our outright speed was good, but there is still a lot of work to do. The altitude gave us issues with power, but that’s no excuse.
“We want to win the first rallycross world championship, and we have definitely shown in previous years how well we can come back from a tough start. The team worked around the clock to get the cars out here and work through the issues we had, so I want to say a big thank you to them.
“The fact that I haven’t won a major race at Lydden – my home circuit- and, it’s up next, just makes me even more motivated to come out fighting at the next round.”
Skorupski added: “It’s been an extremely difficult weekend. At this stage I want to build up my time in the car. We had some very small electric issues, that cost us running time in the heats on Saturday.
“I took all the opportunities for open practice on Sunday morning, and that definitely helped. It was a great feeling to win my race as part of heat four, but I still want to improve. Racing with Monster and with Liam as a team mate has been a crazy experience so far, and I’m looking forward to the next races. We were fast at Lydden in testing and during the British Rallycross, so I hope we can go even faster at round two.”
