Team RX Racing pilot Ollie O’Donovan kicked off his 2016 Rallycross season off well by scoring a podium in the MSA British Rallycross Championship opening round at Croft, after finishing in third place in the Supercar Final.
In the new Qualifying format being used in BritishRX this year, the 2007 British Rallycross Champion won his Q1 race and set the third fastest time. Differential issues in Q2 forced him to miss the race, however the car was repaired for Q3 where O’Donovan secured the eighth fastest time overall at the imtermediate classification and this meant he qualified for the Semi-Final stages. In the Semi-Final itself, O’Donovan went on to finish in second place ahead of James Grint.
Whilst his place was secured in the MSA Supercar Final, O’Donovan was hampered by a misfiring engine and had to defend hard to keep his third place top the end behind race winner Kevin Procter and runner up Dan Rooke. However the London-Based Irishman was happy with his result:
“It was hard work in the final. We were on the back foot from when we had the diff problem. With the new format, you need to finish every race. Really, I was happy that we were fourth, to be on the inside of the grid in the final,” said O’Donovan. “The plan was to try and follow Kevin (Procter) through the first corner and that was pretty much what I did. We had a really bad misfire; I couldn’t believe I wasn’t caught to be honest. Procter’s not going to do the whole season, so I was effectively second in the points. That’s a really good start to the year”
O’Donovan will pilot the Tony Bardy Motorsport prepared Ford Focus again at the next round of BritishRX at Lydden Hill over the Easter weekend whilst his Ford Fiesta is prepared for its 2016 EuroRX entry.
