TitansRX Europe has announced Craig Breen as the latest star driver to join for its inaugural season.
Breen joins fellow World Rally Championship regular Hayden Paddon in the new series which begins on June 29-30 in Dreux, France.
The Irishman is a veteran of 59 WRC events and has claimed two podium finishes in that series. He most recently competed for the factory Citroen team, finishing 11th in the 2018 championship.
“It will definitely be a different challenge to be on the track with a lot of different drivers, it’s something that I’m not used to,” said Breen. “I’m looking forward to that.”
“It’s definitely going to be different to be able to pass people, to manage my racecraft, and it’s not something that’s fresh in my mind so that’s probably going to be the biggest challenge. Having the races so short as well – I’m used to long stages in rallies things like that, it’s going to be short, sharp bursts so they’re definitely going to be the biggest challenges.”
Breen has competed in a number of different rally championships in a variety of cars throughout his career, but his rallycross debut in TitansRX will mark the first time he has competed on track alongside other drivers since his karting days.
“I think that I could be on the pace but it’s my racecraft that I have absolutely no idea about,” he said. “I haven’t raced door-to-door for such a long time and it’ll be the first time ever in a car going door-to-door so that’s going to be the most difficult thing for me to get my head around.”
“I think if I can master that part of the sport early on then there’s no reason why we can’t challenge to win some races.”
Breen has already tested TitansRX’s Patera RX6 car ahead of his race debut and the vehicle specially built for the new series has already left a good impression.
“Driving the Pantera was definitely an eye-opening experience,” Breen said. “I’ve driven a lot of different rally cars, I’ve been lucky to drive lots of different classes of rally cars but rallycross cars, not so many.”
“I’ve driven a Supercar once for a very limited amount of time and I have to say the Pantera, given the weight difference, it’s definitely more agile and I felt I could do everything I needed to with the car. I felt that I could really push, it was giving me all the right feelings.”
“It’s got a lot of power, much more power than I’ve ever driven before so it’s nice to be able to unleash it and play with it on the track,” he added. “I haven’t been on the track with other people yet so I think when I finally get to go door-to-door with people it’s going to be definitely a lot of fun.”
“I’m looking forward to getting more kilometres and more time under my belt in the next couple of weeks.”
