American racer and TV presenter Tanner Foust won the Monster Energry International Rallycross Festival at Lydden Hill Race Circuit on Easter Monday.

Starting his third year in the FIA European Championship for Rallycross Drivers, of which this was the opening round, Foust and the Swedish OMSE team that build and run his Ford Fiesta Supercar mastered the wet and muddy conditions on a day of persistent rain, to qualify on pole position for the A final.

“I don’t have a lot of experience of racing in conditions like that so I really had to let the team lead me on setup, they kept fine tuning it all day,” said Foust who led the final from start to finish.

“It’s the perfect way to start the year but I’m not going away thinking we have the championship in the bag, the result here tells you that it’s going to be a very competitive year.”

Either side of Foust on the podium were Norwegian Mats Lysen and English start Liam Doran (Sittingbourne).

While Lysen had an uneventful run to second place, Doran appeared to encounter every possible problem in the qualifying heats and started from third place on the B final grid.

“That was a tough event, my Citroën DS3 is a new car this year and we only had dry weather testing before we came here so really it was like starting from scratch. The whole event has been like a big test session so to win the B final and then get to third place in A final is amazing,” said Doran who worked his way through the field in a determined drive.

Scotsman Andy Scott (Dumfries) had been best of the British drivers in the qualifying heats, never out of the top four, Scott started the A final from third place on the grid but lost a lot of time after being sent wide in the first corner, the windscreen of his Focus covered in mud and dirt, and was unable to do more than rejoin the race and take eighth place.

The Super1600 and TouringCar classes of the championship both produced first time event winners. Finnish driver Jussi-Petteri Leppihalme (18) qualified on pole position for the Super1600 A final and then led from lights to flag, taking the win in a smooth and controlled drive and leaving defending champion Andreas Bakkerud in second place.

The TouringCar A final was won by 19-year-old Swedish racer Anton Marklund who survived a crash in the qualifying heats to make it into the A final, and then grabbed the lead in the first corner where Derek Tohill and David Nordgaard tangled and ran wide.

Marklund went on to win from Czech Roman Castoral and Tohill.

Results of A finals   Supercar

1 Tanner Foust (Ford Fiesta VII);

2 Mats Lysen (Renault Clio III);

3 Liam Doran (Citroën DS3);

4 Guttorm Lindefjell (Skoda Fabia);

5 Michael De Keersmaecker (Ford Focus II);

6 Stig-Olov Walfridson (Renault Clio III);

7 Jean-Luc Pailler (Peugeot 207);

8 Andy Scott (Ford Focus II)