Liam At Lydden Hill: Doran's GT-R Crash Explained & Gearing Up For The Season

When we interviewed Liam Doran last week at Wembley, all seemed to be on the up-and-up for this future star of Rallycross, mixing it with the likes of Ken Block and Tanner Foust.

Adnan Ebrahim

18 May 2015

When we interviewed Liam Doran last week at Wembley, all seemed to be on the up-and-up for this future star of Rallycross, mixing it with the likes of Ken Block and Tanner Foust. So when news broke of a crash at the Nurburgring involving Liam and his prized GT-R, we were keen to find out the real story direct from the main man himself, and to see whether his confidence had been affected heading into DS3 testing and the start of the Rallycross season.

Adnan: How are you feeling today going into your first practice session with the DS3 here at Lydden Hill?

Liam: Really excited, because it's been a long time coming. We've done a lot of hard work over the winter with the new car, so we're really excited to get out there finally and see whether the hard work has paid off or not! The car, the technology we've used, the team, everything is completely different this year so it's gonna be a good test this weekend. It's sort of a shakedown for me and the whole team.

Adnan: Now about the 'Ring incident, talk us through what happened.

Liam: There's been a lot of negative feedback on the internet about what happened obviously because of my reputation and what I do, I'm supposed to be a professional driver and then go to a track like that in my own road car and make that kind of mistake. You know, mistakes happen in motorsport. I'm massively upset at what's happened, it was my own personal car and I'm at a huge loss with it now. I worked a long time to get that car, it was my dream to have and now it's gone. More important than that, I was in the car with my cousin and so me and him both got out of the car with just scratches and bruises. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything happened to either one of us.

Adnan: Was it just a lapse in judgement?

Liam: Basically we were filming, so I was out there for a promotional thing and I spent the whole day on the GP track. I only ran one lap of the actual Nordschleife track with Ben Wallace and we did more filming on the GP track because it's safer and there's more space to show-off and it's more impressive. We stopped the filming and then my cousin Jake said that he hadn't been round the track and could I take him out? So we went round the 'Ring and I don't like it because I'm quite an aggressive driver and to go well at that track you have to know the place like the back of your hand. I don't like going round there because I always find myself pushing too hard and have to slow down and then I find that I'm not going fast enough.

Anyway we went round there, I did a 7-minute lap which in most people's eyes is a really fast lap - standard GT-R times are 7 and a half minutes so I was happy with that and seeing how I've only been round there five times.

What's happened is we've come off of the 'Ring lap back onto the start of the GP circuit. Not a lot of people will know as you don't really get to drive on the GP circuit but you come off of the end of the full straight of the 'Ring with one corner then back on the GP straight. Where the brakes have got so hot around the 'Ring lap and the distance I haven't braked for has been so long that everything has cooled down and reduced in size, so they've basically stopped working.

I didn't brake too late, I've got video footage of me breaking really early actually but there was absolutely no pedal - I pumped it two times, three times, four times and I just called it really. I've got a lot of driving experience and I knew I wasn't going to stop; I think we got the car down from 160mph to 130mph for a corner where you're supposed to be doing 40mph and at that point I called it and said that it was my decision on how we were going to go in. So I just flicked left, flicked right and then put it in backwards across the gravel trap straight into the tyre wall and that saved our lives. If we had gone in forwards, me and my cousin would have been gone; broken our necks, engines on our laps, who knows. Because I put it in backwards it's written the car off but we've both got out with scratches and bruises.

Adnan: Has something like this affected your confidence going into the season?

Liam: Look at it from a driver's point of view, the only time it'll ever knock your confidence is if you know you've messed up. I know that there was no mistake, it's an unexpected situation - maybe if I had a lot more experience around there I would have known about the brake fade before - it caught me out and maybe stupidity taking a roadcar to the track? It's not knocked my confidence.

You don't get fear through crashes, you get fear through why you crash. I even went to the point of getting the car into control and setting us up to crash. It's massively knocked my ego but it happens and I've gotta get on with it.

Adnan: So going into the season, what would be the ideal end result?

Liam: America is a massive thing for me; for promotional and making my brand and name bigger. But the only dream I haven't actually met now is to win the European Championship. People say, why would you want to carry on doing that? It's because it's been my passion since I was a child - I followed my Dad around doing it and it was always his dream to win it and since then it's been my dream to win it. I know I can, I know my team can and I'm at the level where I need to stamp my authority and say "I'm gonna win this now" and unlucky to everyone else that's trying!