So I want you to just picture this for a second.
You are standing right on the edge of a track.
You're leaning up against this cold concrete
barrier, right? And the air around you is just...
thick. It's heavy with that sharp, unmistakable
smell of high octane racing fuel. Oh, yeah. And
burning rubber. Exactly. That acrid scent of
burning rubber. And down the straightaway, this
pack of cars just come screaming towards you.
But if you listen closely, this isn't that smooth,
predictable whine of, say, a Formula One race.
Not at all. You hear this deafening, high -pitched
screech of slick racing tires just fighting for
grip on perfect tarmac. And then it just shatters.
Yes, in the literal blink of an eye, the entire
soundscape just violently fractures. That screech
turns into this guttural, gravel -crunching roar
as those exact same cars launch off the pavement
and just violently plunge onto a section of loose,
deeply rutted dirt. Mud flying absolutely everywhere.
completely coating the windshields. The engines
are being pushed to their absolute braking points,
just bouncing off the rev limiters, and the drivers
inside are violently wrestling their steering
wheels. I mean, not just to make the corner,
but just to keep these mechanical beasts facing
in a vaguely forward direction. Just surviving
the transition. Right. So what happens when you
take the microscopic surgical precision of traditional
track racing and forcefully collide it with a
chaotic, sliding, mudslinging grit of rallying?
Well, you are welcome to the Irish Rallycross
Championship. It is, without a doubt, one of
the most punishing and technically demanding
forms of motorsport on the planet. And to really
understand it, I want you to build a theater
of the mind right now. OK, let's do it. Keep
that image of the track in your head that you
just described, but picture a split screen. On
the left side, you have a pristine, beautifully
painted, perfectly swept tarmac race circuit.
The precision side? Right. And on the right side,
a muddy, deeply grooved, completely unpredictable
dirt trail through a forest. Rallycross forces
a single vehicle and a single driver to master
both of those completely contradictory environments
within the exact same lap. It's crazy when you
think about it. It really is. It is the constant
violent transition between absolute order and
total chaos. OK, let's unpack this, because that
transition is exactly what we are dissecting
today. We have this enormous stack of sources
outlining the history, the staggering engineering,
the economic struggles and, of course, the standout
stars of this entire motorsport ecosystem. It's
a massive ecosystem. And it's officially regulated
by Motorsport Ireland. Curly known, thanks to
its dedicated sponsors, as the Parts for Cars
Irish Rallycross Championship, or the IRX for
short. Right. In fact, if we were going to perfectly
package this entire journey up today, say, crafting
an Apple podcast title and description to summarize
what we are doing in this deep dive, the title
would simply have to be Dirt, Tarmac, and Dominance
inside the Irish Rallycross Championship. I like
that. Yeah. And the description would read something
like, dive into the high octane world of the
Irish Rallycross Championship. or IRX, in this
comprehensive deep dive. We explore the grueling
tracks of Andello Park, decode the engineering
marvels behind the supercar and modified classes,
and trace the intense recent history of Motorsport
Ireland's premier rally cross -racing series.
That covers a lot of ground. It does. It will
continue with, from snowed -out semi -finals
and gripping night races under floodlights to
the unparalleled reign of multi -year champion
Derek Toehill, discover what makes auto racing
and is so resilient and thrilling. Whether you're
a die -hard motorsport fan or a curious newcomer,
join us as we unpack the grit, gears, and glory
of Irish Rallycross. Perfect. And of course,
we'd weave in those essential SEO keywords, you
know, things like Irish Rallycross Championship,
IRX, Mandela Park, Motorsport Ireland, Derek
Toehill, Rallycross Racing, Auto Racing Ireland,
Motorsport History, and Supercars Racing. That
is basically the blueprint for our mission today.
It's a brilliant blueprint because this isn't
merely a timeline of who crossed the finish line
first. When you dig into these documents, you
realize this is a master class in mechanical
ingenuity. Yeah, survival really. Exactly. It
is a study in institutional survival. We're watching
how a local sporting body fights back against
vicious winter weather, collapsing grid numbers,
and obviously a global pandemic. But above all,
It's about the people, the grassroots mechanics,
tuning engines, and cold garages on a Tuesday
night so they can go to battle on a Sunday. Let's
start with the battleground itself. If we rewind
to the genesis of this championship in 1982,
the organizers faced an immediate logistical
nightmare. They needed a home base? Right. When
you are trying to legitimize a brand new, highly
destructive motorsport, you can't just operate
like a traveling circus tearing up a different
farmer's field every weekend. You need infrastructure.
You need a spiritual home. And for the IRX, that
home became Mondello Park in County Kildare.
The cathedral of Irish motorsport. Yeah, our
sources show that in the early days, almost every
single round was run right there at Mondello.
What's fascinating here is the psychological
and mechanical dynamic that creates. Mandela
Park isn't just a venue, it is the crucible that
really forged Irish Rallycross. But relying on
a single track is a massive double -edged sword.
How so? Well, on one hand, it concentrates your
resources. Rallycross is an exceptionally expensive
sport. By centralizing at Mandela, the teams
don't have to spend half their budget hauling
cars and equipment across the country. Or dealing
with ferry costs across the sea. Exactly. And
the fans know exactly where the sport lives.
But let's look at the downside. If a driver races
on the exact same sequence of corners every single
month for years, the track just becomes a matter
of muscle memory. Right, they could drive it
with their eyes closed. Yeah, and the challenge
of motorsport is supposed to be the unknown.
So to prevent the local veterans from essentially
sleepwalking to victory, the Mandela organizers
had to become architectural illusionists. Right,
because they couldn't physically move the grandstands
or the timing towers, so they constantly changed
the lab breadth itself. Exactly. They would run
the circuit clockwise one weekend, which tests
how a car handles high -speed right -hand sweeps
into the dirt transition. Then the next month,
they would completely flip the script and run
a reverse short circuit. Which completely messes
with your braking zones. Completely. A corner
that was previously a fast exit suddenly becomes
a heavy braking zone. The transition from dirt
to tarmac, which used to be an acceleration point,
suddenly becomes the entry to a tight hairpin.
It forces the drivers to constantly rewrite their
internal pacing. They have to relearn where the
bumps are, where the mud gathers, where the grip
completely vanishes. It's intense. And that relentless
pressure cooker environment at Mandela Park clearly
produced some incredibly sharp drivers. because
by the early 1990s, the local standard had gotten
so high that the European Rallycross Championship
actually brought around Ireland. That was a massive
moment. It feels like a monumental shift. I mean,
it's one thing to be the fastest guy in your
local pub, but it's another to have the heavyweight
champion of the world walk in and challenge you
to a fight. That is the perfect analogy. Putting
the Republic of Ireland on the European Rallycross
map changed the DNA of the domestic sport forever.
Because suddenly they had a new benchmark. Right.
Before the European invasion, the local Irish
drivers were measuring their success against
each other. If your car was a tenth of a second
faster than the guy in the next town over, you
were a hero. But then the Europeans arrived.
And they brought a different level of automotive
warfare. Factory -backed budgets, exotic materials,
specialized engineers. The local Irish mechanics
suddenly found themselves in the paddock, staring
at aerodynamic designs and suspension geometries
they had literally never seen before. before.
It must have been intimidating. It provided a
brutal unforgiving benchmark. But rather than
folding, the Irish domestic field absorbed that
knowledge. They elevated their own racecraft.
They started building cars that could genuinely
hold their own against the continent's best.
Here's where it gets really interesting. Let's
talk about the actual machines they were building.
The class structure in the IRX is incredibly
complex, but it's essentially the Rosetta Stone
for understanding how the sport functions. It
really tells you everything about the ecosystem.
Yeah. Let's decode the grid using the highly
detailed data we have from the 2018 season as
our lens. At the absolute bleeding edge of the
sport, you have the supercar class. The rule
book defines this class with a phrase that should
terrify any normal driver. Oh, I know the phrase.
modified four -wheel -drive cars with unlimited
engine capacity. Unlimited. It's madness. In
2018, Derek Toehill dominated this class alongside
fierce competitors like Michael Coyne and Declan
Kelly. And then you have the Superfinal, which
is essentially throwing all the Lions and the
Gladiators into the ring together. The absolute
fastest cars from the day, regardless of their
original class, fighting in one last sprint.
The main event. Exactly. Toehill usually ruled
the Superfinal too. But let's pause on that phrase
for a second. Unlimited capacity. For someone
who doesn't spend their weekends rebuilding carburetors,
what does it actually mean to put an unlimited
engine into a four -wheel drive car on a surface
that is literally shifting underneath you? It
means you are trying to harness a controlled
explosion. Let's break down the physics of a
supercar. When we say unlimited capacity, we
are talking about custom -built engines that
can easily generate upwards of 600 horsepower.
Which is insane for a car that size. To put that
in perspective, these rallycross supercars can
often accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour
faster than a Formula One car. They can do it
in under two seconds. Under two seconds on dirt.
Well, a Formula One car does that on perfectly
sticky, warm tarmac. A rally -crossed supercar
has to unleash that violence on gravel and mud.
If you put 600 horsepower exclusively to the
rear wheels on a dirt track, the car would just
instantly spin around in a circle. Right, the
tires would just vaporize. Right. Into smoke,
and you wouldn't move an inch forward. That is
where the four -wheel drive system and specifically
the differentials come into play. Okay, let's
clarify differentials because that's a term that
gets thrown around a lot in car circles. If I'm
pushing a shopping cart around a corner in a
grocery store, the wheels on the outside of the
cart have to travel a further distance than the
wheels on the inside of the cart, right? Spot
on. If the wheels on a solid axle were locked
together and forced to spin at the exact same
speed, your car would shudder and hop every time
you tried to turn the steering wheel. Because
one wheel wants to go further than the other.
Right. A differential is the mechanical brain
that allows the outside wheels to spin faster
than the inside wheels during a turn. Now imagine
the complexity of that mathematical equation
in a rallycross supercar. The car is entering
a corner at 100 miles per hour. The front left
tire is on smooth, grippy tarmac. The rear right
tire is suspended in mid -air over a rut. And
the other two tires are clawing through deep,
slippery mud. Every single tire is dealing with
a different surface. Exactly. The differentials
in a supercar have to instantly, mechanically
decide exactly how much of that 600 horsepower
to send to each individual wheel in fractions
of a second, just to prevent the car from violently
spinning out of control. The stress on those
parts must be Unbelievable. The internal forces
acting on those gearboxes and drive shafts are
catastrophic. That is why competing in the supercar
class requires an astronomical budget. You are
basically paying for aerospace level metallurgy
just to keep the car from tearing itself apart.
That really makes the dominance of someone like
Derek Toehill even more fascinating. He isn't
just out driving the field. His team is out engineering
them. They're managing that catastrophic stress
better than anyone else. It's a team sport. without
a doubt. But what I love about the IRX is that
it isn't an exclusive country club for millionaires.
The vast majority of the paddock is actually
populated by the modified and production tiers.
The grassroots heroes. Yeah. Looking at the 2018
breakdown, we see the super modified class, where
guys like Peter McGarry, Michael Coyne, and Lloyd
Spindlove were trading paint. But then the rules
get hyper specific. Yeah. Very specific. You
have the 3A modified class. This is for two -wheel
drive cars, but they can either use forced induction
or have a normally aspirated engine larger than
2150cc. Right. And then right beside that, the
3B modified class restricts drivers strictly
to normally aspirated engines under 2150cc, which
is where Chris Grimes was winning. So let's untangle
that jargon for a minute. Forced induction versus
normally aspirated. What is the real world difference
when these guys hit the mud? It's the difference
between breathing naturally and having a leaf
blower shoved into your mouth. That is a very
vivid image. It's accurate. A normally aspirated
engine relies entirely on atmospheric pressure.
As the pistons move down, they create a vacuum,
naturally sucking air into the engine to mix
with the fuel. So it's just pulling air in like
we breathe. Right. An engine's CC, its cubic
capacity, is essentially the size of its lungs.
The bigger the CC, the more air it can suck in,
the bigger the combustion, the more power it
makes. That's why 3A and 3B are separated by
that 2150cc boundary. It prevents a guy with
a massive 4 -liter engine from just bullying
a guy with a small 1 .6 -liter engine on the
straights. And force induction is the leaf blower.
Exactly. Force induction means using a turbocharger
or a supercharger. These are mechanical turbines
that violently compress the air and force feed
it into the engine. So you can cheat the displacement
rule, basically. Yeah. You can take a very small,
lightweight engine, bolt a massive turbocharger
to it, and suddenly it's producing the horsepower
of a much larger, heavier engine. So why doesn't
everyone just use a turbocharger? It sounds like
a no -brainer. Because of a phenomenon called
turbo lag. It takes a second for the exhaust
gases to spin that turbine up to speed. When
a driver steps on the gas pedal in a turbocharged
car, there is a brief moment of hesitation. Nothing
happens. Nothing happens, and then followed by
a violent, sudden surge of power. On slick tarmac,
that's great. But imagine you are mid -corner
on a slippery mud surface, balancing the car
on the edge of traction. Oh, man. You press the
throttle, nothing happens, and then suddenly
300 horsepower kicks in all at once. The tires
instantly break traction, and you spin straight
into the wall. Ah, so a normally aspirated engine,
while maybe having less peak horsepower, delivers
that power in a smooth, predictable, linear line.
Precisely. The throttle response is instant.
If the driver presses the pedal 10%, they get
exactly 10 % of the power. It allows for microscopic
adjustments in grip. And remember, these modified
classes are two -wheel drive. Right. They don't
have the fancy differentials. They don't have
the sophisticated all -wheel -drive differentials
of the supercars to save them. Driving a high
-powered two -wheel -drive car on a wet dirt
track is like trying to run a sprint on an ice
rink while wearing bowling shoes. Just slipping
everywhere. It requires a delicate, almost balletic
level of throttle control. That makes sense.
Connect this to the bugger picture. By structuring
these classes so meticulously, separating the
turbo cars from the naturally aspirated cars
and the big engines from the small engines, the
IRX organizers created a brilliantly democratic
ecosystem. It levels the playing field. Exactly.
They ensured that if you are a wizard at tuning
small, naturally aspirated engines in your home
garage, you have a distinct championship to fight
for without being obliterated by a factory team.
It prevents the sport from becoming exclusive.
exclusively a billionaire's playground. It's
a mechanic's dream. Yeah. And the sheer variety
of vehicles really proves it. Moving down that
2018 list, you have the 16V production class
for standard cars, one by Siren Murphy. You have
an entire subset of rally cars. Right, the actual
stage rally car. Yeah, adapted for this circuit
format. You've got Class 9 for the smaller engines,
one by Patricia Denning. Class 9A for the mid
-range, one by Jack Deegan. And the heavyweight
Class 9B for the big turbocharged 4WD machines,
one by Joe Downey. But if you want a purely visceral
experience, you really have to look at the buggy
class. This was dominated by Russell Woods in
2018. A buggy is essentially taking the concept
of a car, throwing away the doors, the roof,
the windshield, the interior, and leaving nothing
but a tubular steel roll cage, four wheels, and
a screaming engine. It's the ultimate power -to
-weight ratio. It looks terrifying. And then
on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have
the Fiesta class, which is spec racing. Everyone
drives the exact same standard Ford Fiesta. David
Marr won that in 2018. Spec racing is pure driving
skill. Exactly. because your wallet cannot buy
you an advantage. The only difference between
first and last place, the organic meat sack sitting
behind the steering wheel. The driver. But as
fascinating as all this engineering is, I have
a massive bone to pick with the next category
on our list, the junior class. Ah, the incubator
of Irish motorsport. Incubator is a very polite
word for it. Let's look at the facts here. In
2018, the junior podium was Jack Byrne, Connor
Kehoe, and Michael Ryan. This class is strictly
for 14 to 16 year olds. Young talent. We are
putting 14 year olds into stripped down standard
one liter cars and sending them out onto a mixed
surface track at high speeds alongside a pack
of other highly aggressive teenagers. I have
to challenge you on this. Okay, go ahead. A 14
-year -old's brain is literally still developing.
They lack impulse control. I mean, they can't
legally drive to the grocery store, yet we expect
them to make split -second life -or -death decisions
while hurtling toward a concrete barrier at 80
miles per hour. How is this sanction, let alone
safe? I mean, think about what you were doing
at 14 compared to these kids. Look, I completely
understand the hesitation. From the outside,
it sounds like absolute madness. It really does.
But let's look at the reality of the physics,
the safety regulations, and the psychology of
driver development. First, consider the environment.
A racetrack is a closed, strictly controlled,
unidirectional environment. Meaning everyone
goes the same way. Everyone is going the same
way. There are no intersections, no pedestrians,
no oncoming traffic, no stoplights. From a purely
statistical standpoint, hurtling down the Mandela
straight at 80 miles per hour in a heavily modified
race car is significantly safer than driving
60 miles per hour on a rural public road in the
rain. Because of the safety gear, I assume. Exactly.
These aren't standard one liter cars you'd find
at a dealership. Yes, the engine is standard.
It produces very little horsepower, maybe 60
or 70 horsepower cops. But the interior is completely
gutted. It is reinforced with a heavily engineered
steel roll cage. So it was basically a shell.
A very strong shell. The teenage driver is strapped
into a specialized racing seat with a five -point
harness, wearing a fireproof suit, a fireproof
balaclava, a homologated crash helmet, And a
Hans device. What's a Hans device? It's a head
and neck support system. It prevents their neck
from snapping forward in a severe impact. The
cars are built like tanks. But more importantly,
let's talk about what the lack of horsepower
actually teaches them. Right, because they can't
rely on brute force to get out of trouble. Precisely.
If you put a teenager in a 600 horsepower supercar,
yes, that is a recipe for disaster. But in a
one liter junior car, the acceleration is incredibly
slow. The entire art of racing that car is about
maintaining momentum. Don't touch the brakes
unless you have to. Exactly. If a 14 -year -old
panics and brakes too hard entering a corner,
they don't just lose a fraction of a second.
The car bogs down and it takes them halfway down
the next straightaway just to build their speed
back up. They get passed by five cars instantly.
So it punishes bad driving. It forcibly teaches
them the physics of weight transfer. They learn
how to balance the car on the edge of traction
without scrubbing off speed. They learn how to
read the dirt, how to anticipate the slide. It's
all about finesse. Yes. By the time someone like
Jack Byrne reaches the age of 17, his synaptic
responses to a vehicle losing traction are hardwired.
He doesn't have to think about correcting a slide.
His hands just do it automatically. It's instinctive.
This class is the exact reason why Irish drivers
are so formidable on the international stage.
They learn the absolute limits of vehicle dynamics
years before they ever set foot in a driving
school. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. You
are teaching them the grammar of racing before
giving them the megaphone of horsepower. Beautifully
put. And they need every ounce of that foundational
skill because rallycross is an outdoor sport
and nature has a nasty habit of throwing the
rule book out the window. Which brings us right
into the narrative core of our deep dive today.
The wildly tumultuous 2019 season. Oh, 2019.
What a year. If you were writing a movie script
about institutional resilience, you would base
it on the IRX in 2019. It began with this overwhelming
sense of optimism. On February 17th of 2019,
the organizers held a massive media launch at
Mandela Park. Big event. Huge. The championship
manager... Leo Nolte stood up and confidently
declared that the IRX was in its best position
in many years. And he really had the receipts
to prove it. They had locked down a massive roster
of sponsors. Which is lifeblood for a series.
Completely. Parts4Car has stepped up as the title
sponsor, which is a massive injection of capital.
They were joined by Diamondbrite, IPRS Limited,
Riggs, 4Gigs, and MRCM Roofing. The grids were
healthy, the marketing was polished, and everyone
was ready for a golden era to begin. When a grassroots
motorsport organization secures that level of
corporate backing, it completely changes the
atmosphere in the paddock. The organizers can
stop worrying about how to pay for the track
marshals and the ambulances, and they can start
focusing on improving the spectacle of the racing.
The drivers feel validated, too. Exactly. But
motorsport, at its core, is a battle against
the elements, and the elements decided to test
that optimism immediately. Nature completely
rejected their script. Exactly two weeks after
that sunny, optimistic media launch, everyone
arrived back at the Mandela Park Short Circuit
for round one on March 3rd, and they were met
with an absolute freezing nightmare. Snow. A
massive snowstorm hit the track. The temperature
plummeted. The event had to be completely abandoned
and canceled midway through the day, right after
the first round of semifinals. Try to conceptualize
what it takes to drive a race car in a snowstorm.
We talked earlier about the challenge of transitioning
from smooth tarmac to loose dirt. Now introduce
sub -zero temperatures. The track must be like
glass. The smooth tarmac isn't just cold, it
becomes a literal layer of black ice. The specialized
racing tires these drivers use are designed to
heat up and become sticky, like chewing gum to
grip the road. In a snowstorm, those tires turn
to hard plastic. They offer absolutely zero friction.
And what about the dirt section? It freezes solid.
The mud ruts become jagged, concrete -like trenches
filled with snow. Can I imagine visibility drops
to zero? It's terrifying. You have mud, sleet,
and freezing rain being violently thrown directly
at your windshield by the spinning tires of the
car in front of you. The windshield wipers are
freezing to the glass. The poor mechanics? The
mechanics in the paddock are frantically trying
to figure out how to keep the engine oil from
turning to sludge. The fact that the drivers
managed to navigate those conditions all the
way through the semifinals without a major catastrophe
is a monumental testament to their car control.
And, incredibly, the officials decided that the
results from those frozen semifinals would actually
stand for the championship points. They had to
take something away from the day. Right. Derek
Toehill managed to slide his way to the supercar
in superfinal points. Michael Cohen survived
to take the modified points. Thomas O 'Rafferty
took rally cars. Padrake McHale won the buggies.
Dennis McCrudden took the fiestas. And young
Jack Byrne navigated the ice to win the juniors.
Surviving the ice. They scraped their points
together and tried to keep the momentum going.
In April, for round two, they packed up and moved
west to the Palace Karting Track in Tyna, where
Noel Green actually managed to upset Toehill
and the Supercars, and Willie Coyne took the
modified win. Little change of scenery. Yeah.
And they returned to Mandela in May for round
three on a reverse short circuit, where Toehill
resumed his reign. In July, they ran round four
as a highly marketed Retro Mania event. Toehill
won again, Padraig Leeson took modified, and
Brendan McCaugen won the juniors. But beneath
the surface of these results, a slow moving crisis
was developing. The enthusiasm was fading. The
enthusiasm from February was bleeding out. Grid
numbers were dropping. And then on October 15th,
the bottom completely fell out. This is the brutal,
unspoken economic reality of running a national
racing championship. Mandela Park was forced
to release a statement announcing the absolute
unthinkable. They were officially cancelling
rounds five and six, which were heavily promoted
as a double -header weekend. The devastating.
The stated reason. Alarmingly low entry numbers.
Despite the title sponsors and the media push,
they simply didn't have enough cars turning up
to fictically run the races. This is the dreaded
domino effect in grassroots motorsport. Let's
break down why grids shrink mid -season. It usually
comes down to attrition. Parts breaking. Right.
In round one and two, everyone's car is fresh.
By round four, engines have blown up, gearboxes
have shattered, suspensions have been bent against
concrete walls. Rebuilding a competitive rally
-cross car mid -season requires a massive injection
of cash. Cash that a lot of these weekend racers
just don't have. Exactly. If a driver runs out
of budget in July, they don't show up in October.
When a few key drivers drop out, the grid looks
thin. When the grid looks thin, the racing becomes
a procession rather than a dogfight. And the
fans notice. The spectators notice this, and
they stop buying tickets. When the spectators
stop showing up, the local sponsors start questioning
their investment. It's a vicious accelerating
cycle. Canceling the penultimate rounds of a
season isn't just a logistical hiccup. It is
a massive distress flare. It signals the ship
is sinking. It signals to the entire motorsport
community that the championship is structurally
failing. It was a code red emergency for the
organizers. If they canceled the final round,
the 2019 season would end on a whimper, the sponsors
would likely walk away, and the entire IRX could
have collapsed. The very next week, the Motorsport
Ireland Rally Cross Commission held an urgent
crisis meeting. They had to do something. They
had to figure out a way to save the final round
scheduled for November 24th. And what they engineered
in that room is... For my money, one of the most
brilliant administrative pivots in modern racing.
I agree completely. I call it the midnight miracle.
On November 7th, they announced that the final
round was back on, but they didn't just apologize
and run a standard Sunday afternoon race. First,
they slashed the entry fees to drastically lower
the financial barrier and coax the broken teams
back out of their carriages. Get the cars back
on the grid. But the masterstroke was that they
introduced the first ever race into the night
in the history of the IRX. They rented massive
stadium floodlights and illuminated the Mondello
track against the pitch -black November sky.
Brilliant marketing. So what does this all mean?
Stepping back for a moment, how exactly does
plunging a racetrack into darkness change the
physical reality of the sport? It completely
rewrites the sensory experience of racing. The
transition from daylight to floodlights is not
just an aesthetic change, it alters the fundamental
physics of the track. Like the temperature. First
thing. When the sun goes down in Ireland in late
November, the track temperature plummets instantly.
As the tarmac cools down, the tires lose their
grip. The dirt section, deprived of sunlight,
begins to gather dew and becomes incredibly slick.
So it's like a different track entirely. The
drivers suddenly find themselves driving on a
surface that has vastly less friction than it
did during their daytime practice sessions. So
the car behaves completely differently. But what
about the human element? What happens to the
driver's brain? That is where the real challenge
lies. The human eye relies on shadows to judge
distance and depth. Under artificial stadium
floodlights, shadows stretch in bizarre, unnatural
directions. They get distorted. They flicker
through the roll cage. The apex of a corner,
the exact millimeter where a driver needs to
turn the steering wheel, suddenly looks like
it's 10 feet further away than it actually is.
Your eyes are lying to you. Your depth perception
is constantly being lied to by the lighting.
The drivers essentially have to rely on their
peripheral vision and the tunnel of light cutting
through the darkness. What the spectacle of it.
What makes this pivot so utterly brilliant from
a marketing standpoint is the atmosphere it creates.
Rallycross is already violent, but at night it
becomes a cinematic spectacle. The visuals must
be insane. The brake discs heat up to 800 degrees
and glow cherry red in the dark. Unburned fuel
from the exhaust hits the hot exhaust pipe and
spits massive bright orange flames into the night
sky on every single downshift. Wow. The sparks
from the cars bottoming out over the dirt ruts
look like fireworks. The organizers didn't just
save a race. They manufactured a gladiatorial
spectacle that was so viscerally compelling the
drivers physically couldn't resist showing up
and the fans had to be there to witness it. And
it worked flawlessly. The grid filled back up,
the fans returned, and the November 24th finale
was a massive success. Derek Toehill, proving
he could master the dark just as well as the
snow, won the night race, locking up the 2019
supercar and superfinal championships. A true
champion's drive. Willie Coyne danced his modified
car under the lights to secure his title. Shane
Stanley won the final rally car race, although
Thomas O 'Rafferty had already built up enough
points to win the championship. Pat Ballou won
the buggies, helping Padrake McHale secure that
title. Mark Minahan took the Fiesta win, cementing
Dennis McCrudden's overall championship. Everyone's
showing up when it matters. And in the juniors,
Michael Ryan won the dramatic night race, while
Jack Byrne, the kid who won in the snowstorm,
was crowned the overall 2019 junior champion.
They survived the elements, they survived the
economic slump, and they ended 2019 on a massive
high. But they had absolutely no idea what was
looking just around the corner in 2020. Nobody
in the world did. Right. We move into the COVID
-19 era. 2020 and 2021. This period is defined
by a brutal forced pause, but not before the
sport delivered incredible tease of what the
momentum from that night race had built. The
2020 opener. The 2020 season kicked off on March
8th on the Mondello clockwise circuit. The energy
was electric. There was a massive 48 car grid.
Which is huge. Just to put that in perspective,
the modified class alone had 12 cars lined up.
The Midnight Miracle had worked. The sport was
healthy again, but there was a glaring, bizarre
anomaly in the paddock that morning. Toehill's
choice of car. Yes. Derek Toehill, the reigning,
undisputed, all -conquering 2019 champion, showed
up to defend his title. But he didn't bring his
monstrous 600 -horsepower, unlimited four -wheel
drive supercar Fiesta out onto the grid. He left
it at home. Instead, he completely dropped down
a tier. He entered the modified class, driving
a significantly less powerful, naturally aspirated,
two -wheel drive Fiesta. It was a shock to everyone.
And incredibly, fighting against a massive grid
of specialized 2WD cars, he still managed to
finish on the podium in third place. Meanwhile,
with the apex predator out of the supercar class,
Tommy Graham seized the opportunity and took
the round one supercar victory. Good for Tommy.
What this tells us about the wider sport and
about tow hills specifically is fascinating.
Why on earth does a dominant champion at the
peak of his powers deliberately handicap himself
at the start of a new season? It is one of the
most intriguing psychological moves a driver
can make. When you have access to the most technologically
advanced dominant piece of machinery in the country
and you choose to leave it in the garage to wrestle
a two wheel drive car in a lower class, you are
making a profound statement. What's the statement,
though? Was his main car just broken? We can
look at this from a few different angles. The
most pragmatic explanation is mechanical failure.
Perhaps the supercar suffered a catastrophic
engine issue on the dyno the night before, and
the 2WD modified car was simply his backup vehicle.
If you want to score championship points, you
drive whatever has four wheels and an engine.
True. But there might be more to it. Let's look
deeper at the psychology of a champion. Once
you have completely mastered a four -wheel drive
supercar, once you have proven you can win in
the snow and win in the dark, the challenge starts
to fade. You're bored. Right. Driving a highly
tuned two -wheel drive car on a mixed surface
track is, in many ways, a purer, more difficult
test of raw car control. A 4WD system can mask
a driver's mistakes. It corrects for you. Exactly.
If you enter a corner too hot, the front differentials
can pull you out of the slide. In a 2WD car,
if you break traction, you are entirely reliant
on your own steering inputs and throttle balance
to save the car. It's all on you. Cole Hill might
have dropped down simply in pursuit of that pure
unadulterated driving challenge. He wanted to
prove that his dominance wasn't just a product
of an expensive engine, but of his own fundamental
skill. And taking third place in a 12 -car grid
in a lower class absolutely proves that point.
It's a brilliant storyline. The champion testing
his own mortality. But we will never know how
that season would have played out because just
four days after that massive triumphant 48 car
race, the world stopped turning. Everything shut
down. On March 12, 2020, Motorsport Ireland issued
an urgent statement postponing all Motorsport
events due to the rapidly escalating coronavirus
pandemic. Eight days later on March 20th, a final
grim statement suspended all events until at
least June. And that stretched much longer. As
the reality of lockdown set in, the entire remainder
of the 2020 IRX calendar, the April, July, October,
and November rounds, were completely wiped off
the board. The track went entirely silent. The
contrast must have been jarring. Mondello Park
is a place defined by violent noise and constant
motion. To have it locked down, empty, with grass
starting to grow through the cracks in the paddock.
is a stark image. It's very apocalyptic. For
the drivers and the mechanics, this wasn't just
the loss of a hobby. Grassroots Motorsport is
a deeply ingrained community. It's where you
see your friends. It's where you blow off steam.
But the mechanical consequence of that lockdown
is equally fascinating. Because they attended
Tinker. Because the drivers were forced to stay
home, they retreated to their garages. You had
hundreds of mechanics across Ireland with nothing
to do but stare at their race cars for over a
year. They had the one thing they never usually
have time. Exactly. In a normal season, you are
rushing to patch the car together between a race
in October and a race in November. You use duct
tape, zip ties and hope. During the lockdown,
they had time to completely strip the cars down
to the bare chassis. Oh, man, the upgrades. They
had time to rebuild gearboxes with. absolute
precision. They had time to experiment with new
suspension geometries. The lockdown essentially
turned the entire IRX paddock into a tightly
coiled spring of mechanical anticipation. And
that spring finally, violently uncoiled in the
late summer of 2021. The rebirth of the championship.
Due to the lingering COVID restrictions, they
couldn't start until July 11, 2021. The organizers
had to condense a furious five -round sprint
of a season. Paul at Mondello. Running exclusively
on the Mondello Park clockwise circuit between
July and December to minimize travel logistics.
What a return it was. We have to talk about the
return of the king. Toe Hill. Whatever Derek
Toe Hill was trying to prove in 2020 with that
two -wheel drive Fiesta, he clearly got it out
of his system. Because in 2021, he wheeled the
unlimited supercar back out of the garage and
he unleashed absolute hell on the field. He was
on a mission. He went on a rampage that is almost
unprecedented. He won round one, he won round
two, he won round three, he won round four, he
won round five. He completely swept the season,
claiming the 2021 Supercar and Superfinal championships.
Tommy Graham managed to steal one single Superfinal
win in round two. But other than that, Toehill
was completely, utterly untouchable. That level
of dominance after an 18 month hiatus is staggering.
When an athlete steps away from a high speed,
high reflex sport for a year and a half, you
expect ring rust. You expect them to be a little
slow off the line. You expect their reaction
times to have slowed by a few milliseconds. You
expect them to be tentative under braking. Toehill's
sweep proves that he didn't let his mind or his
machinery degrade during the lockdown. He came
back sharper, more aggressive. and more perfectly
tuned than he was in 2019. It is the absolute
mark of a sporting dynasty. And he wasn't the
only one who came out of the lockdown swinging.
The entire paddock was rejuvenated. In the modified
class, Alan Crockett drew first blood in round
one. But then Peter McGarry came surging back
to take rounds two and three before Philip Kelly
found his rhythm and closed out the season with
wins in rounds four and five. A great three -way
battle. It was a brilliant battle. In the production
and open clubman class, Keith Kershaw took the
opener and Ken Power bookended it with a win
in round five. The rally cars saw familiar faces
with Thomas O 'Rafferty returning to win round
four and Keith Power taking round five. The buggy
class was intense too. Those stripped down visceral
cages were incredibly fierce. Jaco Sullivan dominated
the early part of the condensed season, taking
the first three rounds. But Padraig Leeson adapted
and took round four, and the veteran Padraig
McHale returned to take round five. And the spec
fiestas. In the Fiesta Zetech class, Michael
Ryan secured three victories, while Christopher
Grimes Jr. and Ben Mullins grabbed the others.
And crucially, in the junior class, a new name
stamped his authority on the sport. Yeah. Laughlin
Farrell won three rounds and claimed the 2021
junior championship. Showing that the pipeline
of young talent had survived the pandemic intact.
Damian Farrell also grabbed a junior win and
Davey Aiken took a victory in the retro RX class.
It was a massive desperately needed injection
of life back into Mandela Park. It proved that
the heart of the sport was still beating and
that momentum carried seamlessly forward. It
exploded forward into 2022. As the final COVID
-19 restrictions were lifted, the IRX returned
to complete normality. The organizers boldly
scheduled a full, grueling seven -round season,
all anchored at the Mandela Park Rallycross Circuits,
stretching from a freezing February 13th opener
all the way to a December 11th finale. And the
Toehill dynasty simply refused to yield. The
records show Derek Toehill picking up the exact
same sledgehammer he was swinging in 2021. He
won the supercar and superfinal classes in the
opening rounds of 2022, absolutely cementing
his legacy as the defining driver of this modern
era of Irish Rallycross. No ring rust, no mercy.
We saw the intense rivalries continue across
the board. Philip Kelly and Peter McGarry resumed
their dogfight in the modified class. Keith Kershaw
and Jason McConnan were battling in the open
clubmen at VSA Zetec classes. Good racing everywhere
you looked. Patricia Denning and Shane Mulligan
were trading victories in the heavy rally cars,
while Padre Gleason and Connor Shaw took the
early spoils in the buggy class. And the next
generation continued to evolve with Joshua Power
emerging to absolutely dominate the early rounds
of the junior class. The ecosystem had completely
healed. It had. But before we conclude this journey,
we have to recognize that the Irish Rallycross
Championship with all its deep complexities and
gripping narratives does not exist in a vacuum.
No, it is just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
To truly appreciate what makes the IRX special,
we need to take a step back and examine the broader
landscape of Irish motorsport. Which is vast.
The documentation we have outlines the active
motorsport championships across the Republic
of Ireland, and the sheer volume and variety
of racing happening on that island is staggering.
It is a deeply embedded, culturally significant
obsession. It really is. We aren't just talking
about a few guys racing on a Sunday. There is
a deeply organized, massive infrastructure. Precisely.
Let's organize this dizzying array of leagues
to understand the scale. First, you have an entire
world dedicated to open wheel racing, cars that
look like miniature Formula One cars. You have
the Formula V championships, Boss S Ireland,
and the Irish Strikers. These are pure aerodynamic
track weapons. Very fast, very technical. Then
you shift over to the saloon and sports car categories,
which is massive. You have the Irish supercars,
the ITCC Future Classics Racing for the vintage
purists. You have the SEAT Super Cup, massive
grids of Fiesta Zetec and Fiesta STs, the Geneta
Junior Ireland Series, and the Global Lights.
And that's just the circuit racing. Exactly.
Step off the smooth tarmac, and you enter the
massive world of Irish rallying. This is where
drivers race against the clock on closed public
roads and forest trails. You have the National
Rally Championship, the iconic Irish Tarmac Rally
Championship, the gritty Irish Forest Rally Championship,
and an entire network of regional battles. Like
the Southeast Ages. the Midlands East, West Coast,
and the Border Rally Championship. And the motorsport
diversity keeps expanding. You have precise technical
hill climbs and sprints up mountain roads. You
have endurance racing. You have high speed sideways
drifting with the Drift Games Nationals. You
have grassroots autocross happening on loose
gravel and wet glass fields. There's something
for everyone. And then sitting right alongside
our Rallycross deep dive, you have a massive
stock car and oval racing scene. You have the
legends, the hot rods. the national and premier
classes, production classes, and my absolute
personal favorite category name in all of motorsport,
the nudge and spin class. You cannot beat a class
officially titled nudge and spin. It perfectly
captures the chaotic joy of grassroots racing.
But what does all of this actually mean? Why
does a relatively small island nation have such
a massive, sprawling obsession with making cars
go fast? It speaks to a deeply rooted mechanical
culture. In Ireland, knowing how to fix an engine,
how to tune a suspension, and how to drive a
car on the ragged edge of control is viewed with
immense cultural respect. It's an athletic pursuit.
Motorsport isn't just a fringe hobby. It is a
respected athletic and engineering pursuit. And
the infrastructure supports that. This entire
ecosystem feeds into prestigious nationally recognized
awards. The trophies. You have historic hardware
like the Hawthorne Trophy and the Leinster Trophy.
You have the Billy Coleman Award, which honors
the Young Rally Driver of the Year and the Sexton
Trophy for the Young Racing Driver of the Year.
Those are huge deals. These aren't just plastic
cups handed out in a parking lot. These are highly
coveted honors that can launch a young driver,
perhaps one of those 14 -year -olds we talked
about in the junior Rallycross class, into a
professional international racing career. Rallycross,
with all of its mud, its noise, and its glory,
is just one incredibly bright facet of this massive
cultural diamond. It is a remarkable ecosystem.
And when you look back at the journey the IRX
has taken, you begin to understand why it survives.
This is a championship that faced a literal freezing
snowstorm that turned the track into a hockey
rink in March of 2019. It survived that. It faced
dwindling grid numbers and economic realities
that forced the terrifying cancellation of events.
It survived the unprecedented silent shutdown
of a global pandemic that kept the cars locked
in their garages for over a year. And it didn't
just survive those crises, it actively innovated
its way out of them. It got stronger. When things
looked the absolute bleakest, the organizers
had the vision to pivot. They slashed entry fees,
they rented stadium lights, and they engineered
a breathtaking night race to save the season.
That midnight miracle. It is a sport driven by
a passion that spans generations. From the veteran
engineers trying to tame unlimited four -wheel
-drive supercars, all the way down to the 14
-year -old kids in one -liter hatchbacks desperately
learning how to master momentum and traction
in the junior class. And I think that brings
us to the core takeaway for all of us, whether
we ever sit behind the wheel of a race car or
not. Progress, whether it is in maintaining a
national motorsport championship or navigating
our own lives, rarely happens on a perfectly
smooth, perfectly swept, predictable track. Life
is messy. Progress often requires a violent pivot.
Just like those organizers did when they decided
to light up the night sky, sometimes you have
to completely change your paradigm to survive
a crisis. And much like the drivers in Rallycross,
learning to master the different surfaces in
life, knowing when to put your foot down on the
smooth stretches and knowing how to delicately
balance the throttle when you hit the sliding,
muddy, chaotic moments is what builds ultimate
resilience. Mastering the transitions. Knowing
how to carry your momentum from the tarmac into
the dirt without losing control. Precisely. But
before we close the book on this deep dive, I
want to leave you with one final slightly provocative
thought to mull over. We have spent this entire
hour marveling at the mechanics and the soul
of this sport. We have talked extensively about
those roaring, fuel -heavy, fire -spitting 600
horsepower combustion engines. The loud ones.
But we are living in a world defined by the rapid,
seemingly unstoppable advancement of electric
vehicles. It is only a matter of time. How long
will it be before those screaming, violently
loud combustion engines in the Irish Rallycross
Championship are forced by regulation to transition
to silent, instant -torque electric motors? And
when that happens, what changes? Will a fully
electric IRX lose its gritty, visceral, deafening
soul? Or, because electric motors deliver 100
% of their torque instantly to all four wheels,
will the racing become even faster, even more
violent, and even more thrilling? That is an
incredible visual to ponder. Imagine standing
against that concrete barrier, watching a pack
of supercars launch off the tarmac into the mud,
throwing gravel everywhere, drifting inches from
each other in complete eerie silence. It would
be a totally different breed of monster. We will
have to wait and see what the future holds for
the mud and tarmac of Mandela Park. Thank you
so much for joining us on this massive journey
into the grit. the gears, and the glory of the
Irish Rallycross Championship. Keep looking closely
at the sources around you, keep asking questions
about how things work, and we will see you on
the next Deep Dive.