3 is the Magic Number for Ovenden Racing in Rallycross Championship

We have been proud to support Ovenden Motorsport this season, who have been running a two-car team in the Motorsport UK British Rallycross 5 Nations Championship. The team consists of Tristan Ovenden – former Supernational champion – who is racing in the headline Supercar category, and his 15-year-old son Will Ovenden – who is competing in Junior RX.

Here, the team report on the season finale…

Canterbury, Kent — The 5 Nations British Rallycross Championship season finale took place at Lydden Hill Circuit in Kent over the weekend of the 5th and 6th November. With a firework display on the Saturday after night racing, the season finale was set to be explosive both on the track and off. Canterbury based Rallycross driver Tristan Ovenden, and his red and yellow team, headed to their home circuit with the prospect that they could secure top three season finishes in both the Supercar class and the Juniors.

It was the first time that the British Championship has raced on the new Lydden Hill layout, so expectations were high. The Motul backed driver and his team were confident heading into the event because they had already driven the new track changes earlier in the year at Nitro RX, meaning they knew what to expect.

Practice surprisingly started off in the dry, however, this soon changed and proved the forecast correct as the predicted torrential rain soon set in. This change made the track conditions extremely difficult. With a second row start for Qualifying 1 and Ovenden finishing this round with a positive second, which placed him in fourth overall. He copied this result for Qualifying 2, meaning, at the intermediate stage, he was sitting in fourth overall.

A front row start in the semi-final saw Ovenden nipping at the heels of third place around the newly banked Chessons and a timely joker saw him cross the line in first place. This gave him not only valuable championship points but also a front row start for the final. However, contact in turn one caused the engine to shut down to protect itself due to a huge amount of dirt that had collected underneath the car.

After a long wait for confirmation of the ratified results by Motorsport UK stewards, due to the unusual circumstances of the final days racing being cancelled due to adverse weather conditions. The results, and therefore the final championship standings, were released on Friday 18th November 2022. Both Tristan and Will completed their 2022 campaign in third place in the Supercar and Junior categories respectively.

Tristan Ovenden (#72)

‘What a day…weather played a big part, and we had a poor grid draw too. But qualify was pretty good, to be second, so it was a shame the final didn’t work out with a bit of contact at turn one and then the belt coming off. Still a great fun circuit to drive even with the limited visibility, and lucky enough to have great support at our home race, despite the weather. So it’s an even bigger thanks out to the red and yellow race team for sticking at it in the conditions.’

‘It’s amazing for us both to finish in third spot for the year. The icing on the cake is that Tom who races in The Mini Challenge BTCC support class also finished in third!’

About Tristan Ovenden

Tristan raced in club motocross from 1999 to 2003, with a break during 2001 when the foot and mouth crisis pretty much ended motocross for a year. Motocross is a form of off-road motorcycle racing, held on enclosed, off-road circuits. After 2003, he moved on to supermoto (another form of motorcycle racing) and for the next 5 years he raced at both club and national level. His best race result was 3rd place in the Southern Supermoto expert championship, and he won a national class meeting at Lydden Hill. He was also regularly competing in the British Championship during this period.

Due to an injury, Tristan started to look for something else. Having watched rallycross at Lydden Hill, (pretty much since he was born!) the opportunity to enter rallycross presented itself through his association with Lydden Hill circuit as a local company. He never thought it was a realistic option until the Swift series was available.

He started to race in the series in 2010, below shows you how he’s got on…

2011 – 9th place Suzuki Swift Sport
2012 – 5th place Suzuki Swift Sport
2013 – 2nd place Suzuki Swift Sport
2014 – 1st place Suzuki Swift Sport also awarded the coveted ‘Driver of the Year’ award
2015 – 1st place Suzuki Swift Sport
2016 – 2nd place Super1600
2017 – 1st place MSA Supernational
2018 – 1st place MSA Supernational
2019 – 1st place MSA Supernational
2020 – 4th place Motorsport UK British Rallycross Championship
2021 – 5th place Motorsport UK British Rallycross Championship