A Trying French Odyssey For Ovenden

For the second successive year, Canterbury based racer Tristan Ovenden and his ‘red and yellow’ team headed across the channel to Dreux just west of Paris to join with the French rallycross championship for the 5 Nations Challenge round 9.

The French Championship is extremely strong and boasted a whopping 29 supercar entries! Most of which are ex-World rallycross engineered cars.

Heading into the event, the Witham Motorsport backed driver, was a point off the lead of the championship, so a good result over the weekend was a pre-requisite. The Saturday started with a sunny practice session and set the conditions for the remainder of the day. However, due to circumstances beyond the teams control they had to use their unfavoured reserve gearbox, which in-turn meant the Citroen Supercar wasn’t exactly as they would have liked. Given the quality of the field this meant that Ovenden was fighting an uphill battle from the get-go. In fact, finishing the first day as the lowest ranked British driver.

Overnight the team made some adjustments to the car and they were able to start to find some pace on the Sunday. This would allow Ovenden to better his standing within the British drivers. Eventually finishing as 4th 5 Nations driver. With the season finale just 3 weeks away at his home circuit of Lydden Hill Ovenden is currently still in second place in the championship, albeit before dropped scores are considered. A top three season finish is still very much on the cards.

The season finale Double header is to be held at Lydden Hill on the weekend of 4-5 November. Where there will be night racing followed by a firework extravaganza.

Tristan Ovenden – Supercar (#72)

It was a very tough weekend. Great to be back at Dreux in the French Championship, but the level is so high, quite a bit up even from last year! We struggled for pace on Saturday, and although we did make a few changes to help that, some of it was just trying too hard to find speed against the competition. The spectators over there make it an excellent event, though. They do love the Rallycross!