In his first event with a new car and new team, and with a robust performance in the finals, Liam Doran grabbed third place in the Monster Energy International Rallycross Festival at Lydden Hill Race Circuit on Easter Monday.
The event formed the first round of the 2012 FIA European Championship for Rallycross Drivers and Doran declared his battling performance to be “Almost better than qualifying on pole and winning it.”
Run in persistent rain that left the mixed surface track puddled with mud and water, Monster Energy athlete Doran shrugged off problems encountered in the qualifying heats to climb from ninth to third place in the finals.
“To achieve that from the back feels better than a win. As a driver there’s more satisfaction in racing, passing people and getting a result than the win just dropping in your lap,” he said.
“After the heats I thought I was going home. I was quite lucky to qualify for the B final: how often can you spin in two heats and stall in the other, qualify in the B final and then get onto the podium? I’m really happy but other people don’t understand why because they haven’t seen the dramas we’ve gone through today. And I’ve kept the car in one piece, which on recent outings hasn’t always been a nailed on guarantee,” said Doran who won the B final and to earn a back row start in the A final where climbed through the field to take third place.
“In the final I kept my head cool and just drove round and got the result, I’m really happy because if nothing the else the rest of the Supercar guys are going to go away from here thinking ‘Oh my god, we’ve got a problem now’! This is the first race with this car, a whole new team working together for the first time and the first time we’ve run the Citroën DS3 in the wet. So to come here and that be fast – we had the fastest single lap in every heat – is pretty amazing, without the issues we had in the qualifying races it would have been a doddle!” said Doran who gave his new team credit for producing a great car.
“The team have got this result, the engine is as strong as hell and the chassis is great, I’ve just got to drive it round. We haven’t got the best setup yet and we haven’t done any start line testing yet, you could see that with my starts here, they were terrible. We’re going to do some more testing before the next race in France and nail the starts.
“The championship is going to be hugely competitive this year, you can see that from the results here, but I feel much more confident than I did at this stage last year.”
The second round of the European championship takes place at the Paris West circuit at Dreux in France on April 28-29.
Picture supplied by Rich Sams. To see more of his pictures, visit his facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Rich.Sams.Photography?ref=ts