The roar returns: Rallycross comes back to Mondello

Ireland was once a rallying nation. The names that came from this island, Breen, Coleman, Meeke, were products of something that ran through the culture. And then, quietly, the interest drifted. The crowds thinned. The events moved on.

Today, the FIA European Rallycross Championship has come back to Mondello Park for the first time in over thirty years. There are drivers here from Sweden, France, Norway, the United Kingdom. There are some mechanics who have never set foot in Ireland before this week. And there is talk among the media, half-fond, half-exasperated, that it is a shame we let this go.

Somewhere in the paddock, George Tohill roams, in his seventies, who raced in the last FIA event here, over three decades ago. He is competing this weekend. Back then, 10,000 people crammed into a smaller circuit with barely enough room to see the track, because word had got around that this was an occasion worth seeing. The youngest driver here today in the RX1 classification is 14 years or age. Between them, they span the entire arc of what Irish motorsport has been and might still become.

Patrick O'Donovan a 22-year-old who grew up in London to Irish parents, has that particular hybrid identity that makes certain people question his claim to either place.

He is self-aware about it in a way that only someone who has had to be can manage. "All my Irish family say I'm not Irish enough, and all the British guys say I'm not British enough," he grins. "I just think I get the best of both worlds."

He has been coming to Mondello since he was a child, watching his father race. By 12 years of age, he was behind a wheel himself. By seventeen, he was in Supercar, the top tier of rallycross machinery, cars that go from standstill to 100