EDMOND TANG CHINA DAILY The diverse, vibrant and fast-paced city of Hong Kong is an ideal stage to show off the charms of grand sports events, and where international audiences can develop an interest in motorsports, a seasoned motorsports promoter said after the city won its bid to host the 2023 FIA World Rallycross Championships season finale in November.
It will be the first time that Hong Kong will host the event, which will be held in the city for three consecutive years. The final will be the International event's debut in East Asia and possibly bring it to mainland cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in the future.
Arne Dirks, managing director of the Rallycross Promoter GmbH, said that Hong Kong is a perfect location for promoting rallycross, an exciting motorsport in which drivers race on a closed circuit with mixed-surface surfaces.
In an exclusive interview with China Daily on Wednesday, the senior motorsports advocate said that a round of rallycross races usually takes only three to four minutes. The sport is full of wheel-to-wheel action, and cars can accelerate from zero to 100 kilometers per hour in 1.8 seconds, according to Dirks, who believes that the short but breathtaking sprint race will suit the tastes of an audience living in a city full of passion and vitality.
Hong Kong will hold the rallycross finale on November 11 and 12 and witness the coronation of the annual champion. The racecourse, as the first-ever circuit in a downtown area, will be built at Central Harbourfront Event Space, next to Victoria Harbour. It will be about 1 kilometer long, with a half-mud, half-tarmac surface.
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The annual rallycross championship, which began in 2014, has a series of 10 to 12 events per season, with competitions in different cities across Europe, as well as locations in Turkiye, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. The championship series will kick off in Portugal and then move to Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany and South Africa before being tanned in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The International Automobile Federation's FIA is trying to promote greener motorsports with the two-day competition in Hong Kong this year. The World Rallycross Championship will be canceled without fuel cars, according to the top regulators of global racing events, FIA. Hong Kong's final will be the second all-electric competition in the series history.
EDMOND TANG CHINA DAILY Dirks believes that Hong Kong's finale will be very appealing to electric vehicle EV manufacturers. Dirks said there are a lot of EV manufacturers in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the Chinese mainland, and we can really show what an electric car can do. The manager is looking at the mainland, especially the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, as a potential market for the sport. Dirks said he is open to sharing information or undertaking joint promotions with Macao Grand Prix, another renowned world-class racing event. The manager said that they have different products but they share the same goal to grow motorsport.