I don’t really have time to dwell on the stats though, as off-road ace Kevin Eriksson glides into the pit box and I’m strapped into the (for now) silent machine.
We do a handbrake turn to exit the pits – I assume this is de rigueur in rallycross – then once on the start / finish straight, Kevin puts his foot down.
We undergo an acceleration which one can only characterise as ‘violent’, before slamming on the brakes as we take the circuit’s final corner, and head – following it in reverse – onto a mini rallycross course made out of the grand prix track’s final few turns and gravel traps.
We powerslide and handbrake our way round the rain-soaked course, tyres squealing and juddering as they protest at what Kevin ask of them. The driver experiences 3g under full acceleration, and though the engine has been turned down a bit due to the rain, it’s still all I can do to keep this morning’s breakfast down.
“There’s no grip!” the Swede exclaimed on our way back in, but he seemed to be doing OK to me.
Set up by extreme sports star Travis Pastrana, Nitro RX’s progress has been meteoric.
From holding one off events in 2018 and 2019, in 2021 it became a US-based championship held for just one year, and has now has expanded to hold a ’22-‘23 world championship which will take in the UK, Scandinavia, North America and the Middle East.
Nitro aims to put what it does across through revolutionary broadcasting techniques (drones et al) plus racing battles ready-made for memes and viral social media posts, with the hope of capturing viewers more diverse than the causal motor sport audience.
However, Nitro is entering what can only be described as a crowded marketplace. The WRX championship has attempted to market itself in a similar manner: bumper-bashing racing action packed up as a family-friendly day out, accompanied by American stadium style-pyrotechnics and grid girls.
The FIA-backed WRX series hoped to make the crossover and bring in new audiences but this has only had limited success: YouTube viewing figures for race clips in the thousands and comparable to national series like DTM.
Part of this issue is WRX isolating itself its own pay-per-view channel, whilst Nitro has been shown on BT Sport.