The sudden demise of a motorsport trailblazer

It was supposed to be a leading part of the new wave of 21st century motorsport series; bringing in a new audience with a combination of extreme sports, an intense race format, and unorthodox city locations.

The Global Rallycross Championship gave car racing a foothold in America's hugely-popular X Games extreme sports tournament, boasted manufacturer programmes from Subaru, Hyundai, Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and Dodge, and appeared to be a thriving part of title sponsor Red Bull's sports empire.

It added rounds in Germany, Spain, Barbados and Brazil to its core American venues, and shared bills with IndyCar and NASCAR.

IndyCar teams, including multiple-title-winners Andretti Autosport and Ganassi, even expanded to encompass it. World Rally legends Sebastien Loeb and Marcus Gronholm raced in it. Many future stars of World Rallycross made their names in it. Ken Block was among the big US names bringing a crossover audience to it.

Nelson Piquet Jr was twice a title contender, maintaining a full-time GRC programme even while winning the inaugural Formula E championship. And its final three seasons were won by ex-Formula 1 driver Scott Speed, in an Andretti Autosport factory-supported VW Beetle.

But then, the GRC suddenly vanished with barely a trace. However, those close to the series knew the end had actually been in sight for a little while.

Over the 2017/18 off-season, Honda left the field. An entry fee hike for the remaining manufacturers, allegedly to double what it was in '17, came about as a reaction to that and proved to be the last straw for Subaru and VW.

The two remaining factory teams quit the GRC and later opted to move to the all-new Americas Rallycross Championship put together by World RX promoter IMG.

"Hyundai asked my honest opinion on what I thought of the series and I said it didn't look good. It put a smile on my face when I heard they went out of business" Rhys Millen

The quickfire exits of Honda, Subaru and VW completed a manufacturer exodus long in the making: Dodge, Hyundai, and Ford had already left at the end of 2013, '14, and '15 respectively.

Hyundai's departure in particular came as a shock to those on the outside, coming just as it found its form at the end of the 2014 season, with two wins for Rhys Millen, and looked poised to be a title contender in '15 and beyond.

Millen also built and ran the Hyundais during the firm's GRC spell, and says its hand was forced by a lack of belief in the series management.

"I never lost interest in the series," he says. "We were somewhat forced out of it with our manufacturer withdrawing from the series, which came about from their lack of confidence in the stability of the series and I had to be honest to them.

"They asked my honest opinion on what I thought of the series and I said it didn't look good. Maybe it lasted one more year than I thought it would. [But] it put a smile on my face when I heard they went out of business."

Honda's exit last winter neatly coincided with the conclusion of its two-year deal to compete in the GRC, but Subaru's departure was shrouded in acrimony.

According to court documents filed in the US, Subaru informed the GRC of its departure at the end of 2017 but was met by a rebuttal in the form of a lawsuit from the series that claimed Subaru had a binding agreement to race in the championship in '18 - a claim Subaru denied.

In the same court case, a text message exchange between the GRC's boss Colin Dyne and the former chief of Subaru's US racing programme was revealed, in which Dyne says: "I will make sure that U loose ur job over this. Even your own people hate You ... I'll see u on the other side".

Subaru's reason for its departure, given in an email to the GRC that was made available in the court documents, was a "concern of total supercar entries for 2018" and a feeling of "too much instability to present our factory racing programme for this season".

Dissatisfaction among series organisers, teams, and drivers all played a part, but the biggest factor in the GRC's disappearance from the motorsport landscape was financial.

In the Subaru court hearing, the Olsbergs team - which ran Honda's GRC programme and previously managed Ford's factory presence - admitted to losing money in the series, while Bryan Herta Autosport also acknowledged it had financial difficulties from competing in the championship. And that was before the remaining teams were presented with revised terms and increased fees for 2018 in the wake of Honda's departure.

Following the manufacturer exodus, the GRC attempted to save face by announcing plans for a new 'gold' class - essentially a modified version of the single-make, Olsbergs-built cars from the Lites category, which had been run as a support event since 2013.

Only one team, long-time IndyCar squad turned GRC regular Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, ever publicly expressed an interest in a class deemed by many as nothing more than a publicity stunt and a last-ditch attempt to rescue the collapsing series.

A common misconception about the series in the years 2014-17 was that it was a Red Bull property

The move to use Lites as the GRC's saviour was also considered ironic as it had often been pushed aside during the series' heyday.

While the support category eventually got its own dedicated highlights package on NBC, the reality at the track was much different - with a source telling Autosport "we had multiple qualifying and heat races cancelled due to the track being incomplete, sometimes by Armco suppliers not unloading trucks because they hadn't been paid, or just being so far behind schedule they gave priority to the Supercars.

"It was all swept under the rug like it never happened."

Autosport knows of a number of parties owed money by the GRC at the time of its closure earlier this year - with some claims reaching as far back as 2015 - and the numbers aren't small, in terms of either people or amounts. Sources suggest the GRC's debt when it ceased operating was in the region of $8million - despite the series only running from 2011-17.

Global Rallycross was a trading name for Dyne's Alpha Group, the holding company for which was Europlay Capital Advisors (ECA) - run by Dyne's brother. ECA propped up the GRC financially, but its continued investment, allied with the GRC's failure to pay a multitude of contractors, and the departure of a number of big-name sponsors meant that the series quickly racked up its sizeable debt.

Competing teams were rarely paid the expected prize money, but persevered with the series due to its primetime television arrangement with NBC - which provided them and their partners with relatively good exposure.

During its time under Dyne's ownership, the GRC allegedly rarely invested in promotion and event production. A common misconception about the series during 2014-17 was that it was a Red Bull property. In reality, the Austrian energy drinks firm paid the series a relatively small amount to brand it. Signs of increased involvement from Red Bull ultimately came down to regional marketing managers where the series visited.

Most regional Red Bull representatives didn't pay a great deal towards the series, and with the GRC not investing much in promotion, and choosing to visit mostly new markets every season, as opposed to returning to familiar ones and building up a following, crowd numbers started to dwindle.

"In 2013 when it was at the NASCAR tracks and there were actual experienced promoters helping to sell tickets, those were really well attended races," another source tells Autosport. "It was fun. Ken [Block] was there and Bucky [Lasek], Travis [Pastrana], and that's what GRC was supposed to be - kind of a show but with an organised competition side, of course.

"In 2014 [when Red Bull arrived] it was the perfect mix because it professionalised a bit on the competition and event sides but there was still those guys drawing in the fans.

"But then when Red Bull came in, Colin was convinced that Red Bull was going to do all the marketing. They would provide assets here and there, maybe some blow-up arches or hospitality at one or two races, but they didn't seem to help much with marketing."

The misconception of Red Bull's involvement from series high-ups led to events with very few additional activities besides the racing. Perfect for motorsport purists, perhaps, but given the GRC had its sights on a younger, less motorsport-centric, demographic, it proved to be a massive weakness.

"Attendance started dropping because people didn't know about it, so people wouldn't buy tickets. Or people would come that first time and be like 'OK, I've seen it', and there wasn't anything else for the fans," the source continues.

"You'd hear fans say 'That was fun, but I probably won't do it again, because it's not worth the money'. So, then you have sponsors demanding increased attendance or they'd leave."

Famous sponsors and famous names could only prop the GRC up for so long, as ego and money sparked a spectacular implosion

With the series' income falling, more and more creditors stopped being paid. Autosport made contact with a number of GRC creditors in the first half of 2018, with some contributing to this feature on condition of anonymity, some choosing not to comment and others saying they could not due to ongoing legal proceedings. Businesses all over the US were owed, and not just from the series' final season either.

A contractor who worked with the GRC for one year said: "The more I started to speak to people, the more we realised that everybody else was coming forward and some people weren't going to the races because they weren't getting paid. They weren't paying the dirt companies, they weren't paying the bleacher companies - no one was being paid."

The GRC's debt was another complication in itself. According to an article published on Jalopnik, one company the series borrowed money from was i2i Settlement Partners, but following a wire fraud conviction for the company's president Christopher Dillon, the US government assumed control of the company and filed a suit seeking $441,379 from the series. GRC initially had a $750,000 loan from i2i, which had defrauded more than $5,000,000 from 27 investors.

As the saga of the GRC's collapse was unravelling, Autosport gave Dyne multiple opportunities to comment but received no reply.

Global Rallycross was supposed to be a motorsport trailblazer. The first major modern international rallycross championship, it predated the increasingly successful FIA-backed world championship as well as bringing world-famous names such as Gronholm, Loeb, Piquet, Ganassi and Andretti to rallycross.

In the end, it bit off much more than it could chew. Famous sponsors and famous names could only prop it up for so long, as ego and money sparked a spectacular implosion of a series that could once have justifiably claimed to be the most promising new series in world motorsport.