Nitrocrcross NEXT will take a new form this season as NEXT evo makes its debut. That means more power, more speed, and more overall performance.
It’s great news for those of use watching, but for those behind the wheel, what can they expect?
The new FC2, which will be raced in NEXT evo, is effectively a development of the outgoing SuperCar Lites car that was previously used in NEXT, and it recently made its debut at the RallyX Nordic season opener in Sweden. There, it left a strong first impression on Group E racer Conner Martell.
“The car’s awesome,” he enthuses. “What interested me about the car when I first jumped in it was that it basically felt like I was in a whole new car, it doesn’t have any of the same feelings or anything once you get in it.
“So it shocked me, I felt like I was going to be in a really fast Lites car but it didn’t, it felt like you were in a new Supercar. It is a massive, massive jump up from a Lites car to this car.”
NEXT evo serves as the last stop on Nitrocross' development ladder before Group E, and Martell points out that while the two are obviously different, there are key elements that make it the ideal training ground for the headline class.
“It’s obviously not as quick as a thousand horsepower electric car, but the car is very fast,” he says. “You do get the same paddle-shift gearbox as you do in the FC1 and the steering wheel’s all the same and all the buttons on the steering wheel of the NEXT evo cross over to the electric car.
“With the driving aspect, it’s starting to slide the car around with a lot of power, it definitely drives quite a bit differently – you can mess around with the diff setup and get the car to not want to power-steer in the rear in the NEXT evo – but it can definitely set you up for getting into a much quicker car, sliding the car around, knowing what it’s going to do with power and stuff like that.”
But in spite of that big leap in power, the car remains accessible to the next generation, with Martell pointing out that “it’s very easy to drive”.
“It kind of throttle-steered itself which is nice, because the Lites car always had a lot of understeer so you’re always trying to fight setup, and the Lites car always felt like you could never get the power you wanted, you could never slide the car around,” he explains. “This car allows you to play around with that and feel it, but it is at a very high horsepower with anti-lag.
“With the power you can get the car rotated and have the power through the turn whereas the Lites car, you never had that. You were always much slower when you had a slide, whereas now you can position the car and not lose as much time and it will help you in the turns.”
NEXT evo will debut at the season opener at Richmond Raceway on the weekend of September 7-8. Tickets are on sale now and are available HERE.