Olsbergs MSE boss Andreas Eriksson believes the success of Höljes’ Magic Weekend format can serve as “a concept” for the World Rallycross Championship’s return to action next month.
Eriksson, whose RX Promotion company organized the Magic Weekend alongside Höljes owners Finnskoga Motor Klubb, told DirtFish that he received positive feedback in what was the first major rallycross meeting of 2020.
The event attracted over 90 entries across five classes, with limited numbers of mechanics, the use of drone television cameras and video conferencing for stewards keeping the number of on-site personnel to a minimum over the weekend.
“If I look at the whole weekend, it worked really well, we got very good feedback, people were very happy with how it went,” Eriksson said.
“Normally, people are like ‘it was good but…’ and there were very little ‘buts’ last weekend. And we wanted to show a concept of doing things in a different way for the future, for the world championship.”
Eriksson believes that the way in which broadcasting company NEP, which is also responsible for the World Rally Championship and World RX television output, can provide a working model for championships to produce more sophisticated coverage if on-site personnel numbers remain strictly controlled this year.
That is certainly the plan with regards to the remainder of the RallyX Nordic season this year.
“We have a long list of things we would like to add to the production for future rounds, starting with the drone cameras which worked really well I think in showing how good rallycross is,” Eriksson added.
“It’s funny to think that we started this [the RX Quarantine Shootout] with our phones and now it’s the biggest ever production made in rallycross.
“I was worried in the beginning that people would think that [the amount of production] it was too much TV, and it was a lot, but in the end, we want this to stay all year round in some shape or form.”
The Magic Weekend was run over four days, with three days of competition and a predominantly media activities-only day on Friday that was capped off with the first running of the Legends class in which Eriksson drove his son Oliver’s Ford Fiesta.
Eriksson Sr was relieved that the track action was equally successful, but admitted that improvements needed to be sought, particularly in judicial matters following a 40-minute delay to Thursday’s RallyX Nordic Supercar final after a protest.
“That’s one of the things we discussed afterwards. People need to be able to put in a protest, but this was taking far too long and it was not acceptable [the length of time],” Eriksson explained.
“[In RallyX Nordic] we have a race director with more control than any other motorsport and we had to have that process. It was a simple thing to solve but it took too long to make the decision.
“But we also had people calling in because we couldn’t have everyone at the track because of the recommendations so that was a little bit of a pain in the ass but we’re already working on ways to make that part better for future rounds.”
