In the 9th round of the European Rallycross Championship, Monster Energy driver Liam Doran added more points to his championship total and retained his seventh place in the rankings as the ten-race series nears its end.

Run on the notoriously slippery Slomczyn track 50km south of Warsaw, the Polish event is regarded as one of the most difficult in the championship, a low grip racing surface providing a challenge to drivers, and engineers who must try and setup the cars to work on the uniquely slippery and challenging circuit.

Doran from Sittingbourne and the Swedish KHM Citroën team made the Monster Energy Citroën C4 work well but were destined to have one those weekends in which the promise of victory slipped through their fingers, the whole thing culminating with Doran being summoned to appear before the Stewards who stripped him of his B final victory and reclassified him in 11th place having judged that he hit another competitor while making a last lap pass.

“I had some good races in the first two heats, but that’s not always fast and it really only gelled in the third heat where I was third fastest. We were in good shape then because we’d got the car setup really well and I had saved tyres for the finals so I was confident,” said Doran who passed Tanner Foust in the first lap of the B final to lead,

“I knew that there was not much between us on lap times and that I had to keep pushing so I knuckled down and nailed the best laps – it was win or go home, and I didn’t want to go home. There were a couple of small mistakes but I kept gap and was level in the last lap when I took my Joker Lap.”

Foust and Timur Timerzyanov led the chase, and as Doran exited the Joker Lap he split the pair, which is where the trouble began. “I knew it was going to be close but that there was a chance. I got a hit from behind and that pushed me into Timerzyanov. If I’d done anything wrong I’d have put my hands up and admitted it but I don’t believe that I was wrong.

“The decision went against me; disappointed doesn’t come close to how I feel about it. I genuinely believe that I could have won the A final because we were in such good shape at the end of the event but that decision ruined the event. It’s really messed up what should have been an exciting end to the season with me carrying momentum into the last couple of races and the worst of it is that it played into the hands of the guy who caused it,” said Doran.

“We’ll bounce back strong again and look forward to finishing on a high in the last race in the Czech Republic.”

Team boss Hansen – the most successful driver in the sport before he moved into team ownership was pragmatic about the outcome; “It was not the ending I had hoped for this weekend, it looked as if we would get a top six finish and it didn’t quite happen, but that’s motor sport, and if it was easy none of us would be doing it,” he said.

Next event, Sosnova, Czech Republic, September 30-October 2