Multiple American rally champion David Higgins is relishing the chance to compete on home soil at the opening round of the Americas Rallycross championship at Silverstone.
The majority of Manxman Higgins’ career has been in the US, but ARX’s debut at the SpeedMachine festival in the UK gives him a rare opportunity to appear in front of a home crowd.
“It’s great to be here at Silverstone, a home event for me. I don’t get chance to compete in the UK very often at all so I’m really thankful to Subaru of America to give me the chance,” he said. “We’ve got three brand new awesome cars here that they’ve built over winter and I can’t wait to see how they go on the track.”
Higgins is competing as part of a three-pronged attack from Subaru Rally Team USA, alongside former World Rally Championship regular Chris Atkinson and multiple Global Rallycross event winner Patrik Sandell. The team has spent the winter completely redeveloping the WRX STI, introducing a raft of aerodynamic and engine changes in what is the team’s sixth new car in five seasons.
Credit: Dominik Wilde
“Rallycross as for sure been hard for the team, it’s a very different sport to what we do out on the rally stages and over the last few years we’ve been getting closer and closer,” said Higgins. “This year we’ve made a really big step again and designed three completely new cars, and I’m just really eager to see how they go now.”
“The effort that’s gone in, there’s a lot of testing with them over the winter and I think the team can’t wait to get on the track now and see what they go like,” he added.
While Higgins is currently unlikely to compete in the full ARX season, he is still aiming to win the opening round at Silverstone.
“I want to win everything I do, whether it’s rallying, rallycross, or racing karts with the kids,” he said. “When you’re a driver you want to be at the front and that’s what the aim is.”
“Normally when I’ve done rallycross events in the past I’ve been in a step down from the other cars because I’ve just been a guest driver, whereas now we’ve got three equal cars so from a team point of view we can develop the cars better, we can share information, we can all be working for the same goal, but when it comes to the semi finals and the finals it’s elbows out and every man for himself.”
