Nitro Rallycross Race Preview: Wild Horse Pass
It’s been a little while since the premier class of rallycross has seen a doubleheader round in the United States, but Nitro Rallycross is bringing it back for the first time in more than three years with this weekend’s visit to Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Arizona. With a full event scheduled in for Friday and the typical two-day race format set for Saturday and Sunday, it’ll mark the first time that NRX’s electric Group E class has faced two events over a single weekend.
The doubleheader has long been a way for rallycross promoters to give fans extra bang for their buck. The early days of Global Rallycross closely resembled NRX rounds, with bracket racing on the first day followed by larger fields on the second, but that format was abandoned after 2011; from 2013 forward, though, each GRC season had at least one weekend with two separate Supercar finals. Its successor, Americas Rallycross, only ran one Supercar doubleheader at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in 2019. Since GRC’s demise, dual-final weekends have mostly been centered on the development classes, as a means to give those drivers more meaningful track time and the opportunity to develop—a practice which even NRX has continued with its own development series, like NRX NEXT, side-by-sides, and crosskarts.
If the most grueling week yet of Group E racing wasn’t intriguing enough, though, there’s also the star power of two of NASCAR’s biggest names to make things wilder. 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion Chase Elliott returns after making his rallycross debut in last year’s finale from The FIRM in Florida, while 2022 Daytona 500 winner Austin Cindric makes his first rallycross start in more than five years after having had plenty of success in the GRC days. Both will be new to racing the FC1-X, though, and will have to compete against a full fleet of drivers who have been running them since the summer.
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing remains the team to beat, with Robin Larsson, Andreas Bakkerud, and Glen Helen Raceway winner Fraser McConnell the top three in points. DRR drivers have scored a combined 10 of 12 podiums so far this season, with Larsson never finishing worse than second in a final so far and none of that group finishing worse than fourth in a feature. DRR has also combined for 30 wins in Battle Bracket action, with Larsson again at the top of the charts with 12 of those victories and their full-time trio having claimed every Top Qualifier award.
The North American leg of NRX Next kicked off last time out at Glen Helen with George Megennis and Casper Jansson splitting the wins, but Megennis holds a 16-point advantage with a runner-up finish in the second race. In the side-by-sides, series founder Travis Pastrana has been pulling double duty with his Group E commitments, and leads Gregoire Michaud by 12 points thanks to two wins and four podiums. Brian Deegan, winner of the other two races, is third. Just like Group E, SXS will get some added juice to its entry list as well with the addition of BJ Baldwin, now an eight-time off-road series champion after winning the Best in the Desert Trick Truck title this year.
Live coverage of Nitro Rallycross from Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park kicks off on Peacock on Friday at 6PM ET, and on both Saturday and Sunday at 4PM ET. With the cancellation of its planned December round in Saudi Arabia, the series picks back up in January 2023 at an unannounced venue in Canada.