Rallycross making U.S. return at Crandon

Rallycross will return to the United States this weekend with a RallyX exhibition race at the 56th annual Crandon Off Road World Championships.

It will be the first time the discipline has had a top-level race stateside since the abrupt end to Nitrocross last October, and will serve as a test and demonstration ahead of a full RallyX event as part of next June's 33rd annual Forest County Potawatomi Brush Run.

“I think this is exactly what I've been looking for,” said RallyX promoter and First Corner founder Andreas Eriksson of the discipline's addition to the Crandon bill. “I feel home and I can proudly say that I feel like RallyX has actually found a good home in America and [we’ll] see what happens next. But this would be something I hope we can do 10 years.”

RallyX’s expansion across the Atlantic comes amid a boom for its European operations, with the Nordic series regularly attracting higher entry lists than the arguably more prestigious world and European championships.

Eriksson hopes that mirroring that setup – one that itself is similar to the established off-road framework in the U.S. – will eventually bring success for a motorsport form that has had a tumultuous time stateside with the premier category running under the X Games, Rally America, Global Rallycross, Americas Rallycross and Nitrocross banners since it debuted.

“I've been in America since 2008 – I did X Games, I did series here in America that did rallycross before, but the main thing we’ve done is RallyX,” said Eriksson. “For 14 years now we’ve done RallyX in Europe, and it's built the same way as here. It’s built as a family foundation.

“Right now, RallyX has become a bigger series than the world championship and the European championship, and we thought it was time to grow outside and to America. I think RallyX still fits perfectly.

“We have everything. We have the EV car with 1000 horsepower down to the crosscar for 12-year-olds, so I think we have something for everyone. We have great racing, we have short racing, we kind of have a coliseum where we do shorter races, more of them, and then we get a higher higher up.

“So I think we will add something different than what we’re used to, but I think it fits into this kind of arena you have here. It's an amazing sport – it's all about rebellion and it’s all at full speed 100 percent.”

Five cars from two teams will take part in the demonstration event at Crandon, with Kevin and Oliver Eriksson as well as Tanner Foust driving for Olsbergs MSE, and Fraser McConnell and Andrew Carlson driving for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

Tanner Foust has competed in every iteration of Rallycross in the U.S., winning four championships and 24 events – both records – across Rally America, GRC and ARX-sanctioned series. Dominik Wilde photo

All five will race in the 1000hp, all-electric FC1 developed by First Corner – a joint venture between Sweden’s OMSE and QEV Technologies of Spain. The car previously ran from 2022-24 in Nitrocross, and also featured at the Race of Champions in 2023.

The car has continued to be developed during the downtime for U.S. rallycross and now features a sound system co-developed by performance exhaust brand Borla and automotive audio specialists Kicker Audio. The system developed for the FC1 – which can go up to 120 decibels – is bespoke and makes the car the first electric racing car in the world to have such a feature. Eriksson believes it could go some way to alleviating fans’ apprehension around electric race cars and improve the trackside experience.

“I'm a technical guy – I build cars and I like to see new things,” said Eriksson. “Five years ago, I thought electric cars would be cool, not only because they are fast, but because I thought that it’s something that drivers would enjoy. So we build the FC1 car for one reason: to make sure the driver has something they never had before.

“And that was great – the drivers loved it. But the fans needed something more. So we thought, ‘OK, how do we make that sound inside the cockpit [go] out to the fans?’ And that's what we will debut. We have this new system with Borla and Kicker and hopefully you like it.

“I know the driver likes it inside the car, but we’ll see if the fans like it. We are debuting that new system, and I'm a little nervous, but it's pretty cool, if we can get this to work.

“The next step is with speakers and the music and lights and everything on it, and maybe the big, big, big show; but this is the first time, so don't be too hard tomorrow or on Sunday. But I think it works.

“The cars are doing 0-60 in one and a half seconds, they’re so fast and they can jump as far as a Pro4, and we can do all that stuff, we just need to make sure that we add an extra element of things through it as well.”

The FC2 – a combustion-engined and sustainably-fueled development of the venerable Super Car Lites platform that was used in Nitrocross NEXT and has raced successfully in RallyX Nordic, too – will also be at Crandon, albeit not racing. The event will also host the U.S. debut of the new FC5 crosscar vehicle which, again, won’t be racing.

The rallycross demonstration race is set for Sunday Aug. 31 at 4:45pm local time, and will utilize Crandon’s short 0.75-mile layout for its main lap with the medium layout, mainly used for Pro side-by-sides and Class 11s, forming the joker lap.

The RallyX exhibition race will be part of Crandon’s weekend-long broadcast on the RACER Network and RACER+ App. See the RACER TV page for all the airtimes.