American rallycross is set to resume after a year-long hiatus with Nitro Rallycross’ first full season. The series will finally branch into a full-fledged championship for the 2021 season featuring five tracks and seven teams to compete for gold. New faces and old return as the series kicks off this Friday at the Utah Motorsport Campus in Salt Lake City.
Some familiar faces return from past iterations of American rallycross such as Tanner Foust, Travis Pastrana, and Steve Arpin but without some new competition. A total of 14 drivers are competing in the top level of Nitro Rallycross, while five will participate in the lower tier support class NRX NEXT. Those top-tier drivers include some of the fastest Swedes in Timmy Hansen and Robin Larsson, but also the likes of British natives Liam Doran and Oliver Bennett.
With a large accumulation of drivers, Nitro Rallycross sees a total of seven teams enter competition with some familiar names. The privateer teams of Loenbro Motorsports and Xite Energy Racing plan to make their mark on the series featuring a new Hyundai i20 for Arpin and the Mini for Bennett.
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing will reserve two Audi S1 for Americans Tanner Foust and Cabot Bigham. However, the Audi S1’s are not limited strictly to DRR as Monster Energy RX Cartel will also drive them in supporting Liam Doran and Robin Larsson.
Meanwhile, Red Bull Hansen make their highly anticipated return after winning the last race in 2019 with Kevin Hansen and Former World Rallycross Champion, Timmy Hansen piloting a pair of Peugeot 208’s.