Nitrocross Race Preview: Glen Helen
Images via Matt Kalish
The 2023-24 Nitrocross season takes on its last event of the calendar year this weekend at Glen Helen Raceway, headlined by Rounds 6 and 7 of the Group E campaign. All four divisions will take on two finals apiece, with live streaming coverage kicking off Saturday at 9PM ET/6PM PT and Sunday at 7PM ET/4PM PT on Rumble.
It’ll be a historic weekend in the premier Group E class thanks to Lia Block, who will take over the second Vermont SportsCar entry from series founder Travis Pastrana in the Sunday round and become the first woman to race the series’ FC1-X car. Alongside a championship-winning season in stage rally and signing a driver development deal with the Williams F1 team, Block has been a regular frontrunner in the NX Next class this year, with two podiums last time out at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park.
The sacrifice essentially takes Pastrana out of a five-driver Group E championship battle, as he enters the weekend within 60 points of championship leader Kevin Eriksson of Olsbergs MSE. Eriksson and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/RX Cartel’s Robin Larsson are split by a single point, with Larsson’s two wins thus far superseded by Eriksson’s consistency. Larsson’s DRR teammates Andreas Bakkerud and Fraser McConnell are behind them, with the gap from Bakkerud in third to Pastrana in fifth just 14 points at the halfway mark of the campaign. Joining the series regulars for the first time will be rookie Victor Vranckx, while Brian Deegan will run it back with Pastrana as the duo competes in both the Group E and SXS classes.
SXS may have the deepest field of all, though. Alongside the racing star power of Pastrana and Deegan, and the crossover appeal of names like UFC legend Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and skateboarding icon Leticia Bufoni, the class boasts three top young talents at the top of the points table. Tyler Remmereid and Kainan Baker have combined for five of the six race wins so far, with Remmereid’s consistency giving him an 11-point advantage over Baker’s four wins, while Gray Leadbetter sits a comfortable third with finishes of fourth or better in every race so far.
NX Next continues to grow in size, setting a new high of eight entries this weekend as former Global Rallycross X Games competitor David Sterckx and Alastair Scully join Block, points leader Casper Jansson, a three-car effort from BAK40 Motorsports, and Wild Horse Pass newcomer Patrick Gruszka. Rounding out the field are the Baja Bugs, which debuted in Nitrocross here in March in the 2022-23 season finale and have been a staple ever since. Blake Wilkey and Ryan Rodriguez split the race victories in that event and will be on hand to defend; they’re also the only two drivers to win elsewhere this season, splitting the wins at Mid-America Outdoors and Utah Motorsports Campus before Rodriguez launched into a three-race winning streak that included a sweep in Arizona.
For everyone else, Glen Helen was the only venue that played host to the series twice in 2022-23. McConnell won the Group E race last December, while Pastrana and Larsson took the wins in March. In Next, George Megennis and Jansson split the December rounds before Tommi Hallman swept the March finale; Deegan and Pastrana took a win apiece in SXS last December before Gregoire Michaud swept the March finale on the way to that class title.
After Glen Helen, Nitrocross takes a break until the first week of February, when the series returns to the ice in Calgary at GMC Stadium. The season-ending doubleheader will take the series to Las Vegas on March 1-2, marking the return of the sport to the city for the first time since the GRC era.