TitansRX founder and CEO Max Pucher was left pleased with the result of the long-awaited first weekend of racing action in Essay, France.
The event in Normandy attracted plenty of passionate local fans, who all got to witness two full rounds of action-packed racing across two days, and the feedback was universally positive, with the series different approach to racing and driving standards praised by the visitors.
„From my point of view we delivered some of the most amazing rallycross racing that there has been in a long time,“ said Pucher. „I had 20 or 30 French fans come up to me and say we have never seen rallycross racing like this, this is absolutely incredible.“
The series moves to Lydden Hill in the UK next, and with the tricky first weekend now in the books, Pucher said there’s very little that the series needs to work on to build upon last weekend’s success.
„Actually there’s very little [to improve],“ he insited. „There’s obviously some things we can improve, but we made a huge improvement from Saturday to Sunday in our organisation because we saw what worked and what didn’t.“
One thing Pucher did single out to work on was the way penalties are delivered to drivers. TitansRX’s relaxed driving standards rules means that some contact that may be forbidden in some rallycross series is acceptable in TitansRX, but finding where to draw the line is the next step.
„The one thing we will need to learn to improve is how we do our penalties, because that’s a learning stage,“ said Pucher. „I think Eva [Kerschner] our race director did a fantastic job today keeping the boys and girls in check. It’s difficult to explain to them and then judge them on a fair level when obviously it’s very easy to go wrong.“
„We told them that if you are pushing you’re taking a risk – if it works out, fine, if it doesn’t work out, you end up with a penalty. It’s not pushing just because, but if you are pushing you are taking a risk of overdoing it.“
I spoke to virtually all of the drivers that ended up on the hard part of it, and they all said ‘that’s what good racing is about, I wish I hadn’t been pushed out but…,’“ he added. „I had not a single one who said it was rubbish and it’s not racing but everybody said it’s fantastic racing.“
