Gerard de Rooy, son of Rallycross legend Jan de Rooy, has done his first test drives at the Eurocircuit to get acquainted with the motorsport that made his father famous in the 1970s, before competing in his first ever ERC round.

Last Thursday was a very special day for Dutchman Gerard de Rooy. During the night he became father of a baby child, a couple of hours later he went to the venue where his own dad made himself a name as one of the true Rallycross legends of the early years. De Rooy junior recently decided to take part in the Dutch ERC round on August 11 and 12 at Valkenswaard, racing in a motorsport he has not done so far. And Thursday July 19 was the day the 32-year-old was able to try out a 540+bhp Citroën C4 SuperCar for the first time on a track he knows only from the seat of a 9,000+kgs Rally Dakar truck yet.

After some rain in the morning the weather turned out fine and offered perfect circumstances for testing. Liam Doran and his father Pat had arrived from England to test their Citroën DS3 SuperCars while the 2011 C4 of Doran junior was ready for Gerard de Rooy’s first Rallycross intermezzo. Newly-fledged grandfather Jan de Rooy was at the spot to watch and support his offspring with good advice.

After the car seat was propperly fixed for de Rooy’s needs and all instructions were given the Rallycrosser in the making did his first practice session in a rather calm style. “I had some early problems to adopt to the length of the car and to find out how to match-up with the power,” said the 2012 Rally Dakar Truck category winner after his first laps. However, the second practice was done with higher speed and the Rally Raid truck racer got more and more used to his small but amazingly powerful machinery. The grin on his face when coming in from the second set of laps proved that de Rooy had a lot of fun and is eagerly awaiting August 11 now.