Yesterday’s Global RallyCross Championship event to feature in the Barcelona X Games programme was cancelled after heavy rainfalls due to an unusable all-loose surface track.

While the Barcelona Global X Games in Spain became another great success with the fans of modern action sports the Global RallyCross Championship (GRC) event, which should have featured in the X Games programme once more, was cancelled by a last-minute decision yesterday evening. After a couple of hours and several delays the organisers eventually claimed that the all-loose surface track inside Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium ‘Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys’ was unusable for the 17 waiting in vain carsport competitors. The short circuit had been built over night from Saturday till Sunday, only after the previous motocross competitions had come to an end. It consisted of a Start-Finish grid made of concrete and an all-dirt track with table jump made from earth/clay.

FIA’s Off-Road track inspector Michael FitzSimons from Ireland: “All in vain at the end of the day, literally. Great effort by all involved, 18 hours non-stop through the night to no avail. If the gods are not with you, they are against you!” The Global RallyCross Championship organisation, in cooperation with American global television network company ESPN, is now checking if the event could be replaced later this year. Colin Dyne, Global Rallycross CEO: “Due to heavy rain and the resulting adverse course conditions, the Global Rallycross competition at X Games Barcelona was cancelled. Global Rallycross will announce the addition of another race as a makeup race on the calendar shortly.”

Hoonigan in Chief Ken Block on the cancellation: “GRC runs a spec tire for all of their events and it’s the only tire allowed. It’s a grooved racing slick designed mostly for tarmac. This means that on a soaked, slick, mud racing surface like the one here in Spain last night [it was a dirt surface on a flat stadium floor with no chance of drainage], it’s just not going to perform for racing in that situation. The decision to cancel the race was smart because there wouldn’t have been a competition, it would have been bumper-cars at 15mph, as none of us could possibly get any traction. Cars would have been wrecked for no good reason and the racing itself would have been horrible. At the end of the day, I am gutted that my team and I came all the way to Spain and didn’t get to race, but the GRC officials made the right call.”