Rallycross: From Lydden Hill to the Electric Disaster and Back | Klara Andersson and Andrew Coley | Klara Andersson

Video Description from YouTube:

Rallycross is one of motorsport’s best-kept secrets. Wheel-to-wheel racing on mixed tarmac and gravel surfaces, cars with 600 horsepower launching 0 to 100km/h faster than a Formula 1 car, all packed into a three-minute sprint. And it has had one of the most turbulent decades of any series on the calendar.

In this episode, Drew Bentham sits down with two people who’ve lived it from the inside. Andrew Coley was the voice of World Rallycross from the very first round in 2014 and commentated on every single event during the championship’s peak years. Klara Andersson is the Swedish driver who made history in 2022 as the first permanent female competitor in World RX, and the first woman ever to stand on a top-flight rallycross podium.

Together they trace the full arc of the sport. We go back to where it all started, at Lydden Hill in 1967, when British TV needed something to fill airtime when the horse racing got rained off. We talk about the glory years of 2014 to 2018, when Volkswagen, Audi, Peugeot and Ford all piled in with factory backing, massive budgets and some of the biggest names in motorsport history. Those years brought Petter Solberg, Mattias Ekstrom, Sebastian Loeb and Johan Kristoffersson onto the same grid, and the racing was extraordinary.

Then came the electric era from 2022. The ambition was there. The reality was messier. We get into the problems the series faced, including the devastating Lancia Delta fire at Lydden Hill in 2023 that destroyed two cars and a transporter and cancelled the British round altogether. The championship found its footing again with the Battle of Technologies in 2024, but by 2025 the World title had been wound down.

Now in 2026, the European Championship is back with 30 cars on the grid at the opening round, the biggest field in nearly a decade. And with WRC27 regulations on the horizon for 2028, and a Rallycross World Cup heading to Jakarta in December, there’s a genuine sense that the sport is pointed in the right direction again.

This one has history, honesty and real optimism. Worth your time.
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