The Easter weekend saw the traditional round of the MSA British Rallycross Championship return to the arguably best-known circuit on the British calendar, Lydden Hill in Kent. Looking to capitalise on his win at Croft earlier this month, and extend his lead on the Super 1600 Championship, Craig Lomax and his XtremeRX team travelled to the meet, but were greeted with disappointment and misfortune.
Despite the horrendous weather the previous day from ‘Storm Katie’, Lomax, along with the other drivers, were undeterred by the adverse conditions, and instead focussed on the job in hand. His determination to succeed was shown in Qualifying 1, where, in a field that featured several top European teams and drivers, Lomax was the fastest Brit by 2 seconds, even from his position from the back of the grid.
Qualifying 2 again saw Lomax starting from the back as the only British driver in the line-up. The session ended with Lomax finishing in tenth position. Breaking from what seemed to be a streak of bad luck, Qualifying 3 saw Lomax draw a fourth spot on the grid, and so he lined up behind the eventual winner, Kasparas Navickas, the young driver from Latvia. This also turned out to be his most successful session, with Lomax putting in a top five performance.
However, the pace that Lomax had achieved in Qualifying 3 had taken its toll on the car and its newly rebuilt engine; so despite having qualified in fourth place for the semi-finals, the decision was taken not to run again, as to prevent any further damage and ‘conserve resources’ for the opening European round in April. Lomax has admitted that it was ‘such as disappointing weekend’ as the team had ‘all worked very hard to get the car ready for this round’.
Lomax also thanked his ‘team and all his sponsors and to Impulse for the ongoing engine development’.
