Nani Roma has a luxury that few other Global Rallycross drivers can claim: making his debut not far from his hometown.

Roma, from the village of Folgueroles, has spent the majority of his career focusing on the Dakar Rally and other rally raid events. But when X Games came to Barcelona, he jumped into the event head first: not only will he be racing a car in the event, he was also involved in the event’s organizing committee.

In preparation for Sunday’s race, Roma talked about his background, testing his MINI, and racing in front of the local fans:

For the American fans who might not know about you, who are you and what is your racing background?

My name is Nani Roma, I am Catalan. I race in the desert—I started in 1991 to race enduro, and after I started Dakar in 1996 to race motorcycles. In 2004 I won the Dakar on a motorcycle, after that I jumped to cars on team Mitsubishi. I finished third overall in 2006. After Mitsubishi I jumped to MINI BMW, I finished second in 2012 and last year I finished fourth. Now I try to win the Dakar in cars, only two people in the history of Dakar have won car and bikes, Hubert Auriol and Stephane Peterhansel, so now my focus is to win by car. My racing is some rallies in Spain, World Rally cars in Spain, but mostly in the desert.

You’ve already accomplished a lot in your career. Where did your interest in racing originally come from?

Before I started racing motorcycles I played football. Spain is a really big country for football, and I played that until I was 18 years old, after that I changed to bike. In my area, it’s a lot of races, the World Rally Championship is there, and when I was young I followed a lot of the races, I’m really passionate for motorsport. But my family didn’t have a tradition of that, and I started so late in racing, but was fast too. I take the good results—I won in Spanish enduro racing and of course Dakar. But at first my passion is football.

You race a MINI over at Dakar, and you’ve brought a MINI here to X Games Barcelona. How are those cars different? Do you have to drive them differently?

This car isn’t the same car I drive in Africa, that car is the big one. This is the car I use in Europe in the rallies I use in Spain. I need to adapt the rules from rallycross. I need to make more power, change the restrictor, the setting of the car I need to adapt. But I don’t know exactly what is the best car for this condition, never have I driven something like that where there’s guys around me making contact with me. I don’t know. I try to make it my best and find the easy car to drive, but we will see.

A few weeks ago you shook the car down at the Montalegre circuit in Portugal. Are you comfortable with it? Were you able to learn from that track?

Yeah, the only difference in Portugal is I had more restrictor like in the Spanish championship. I didn’t use the big restrictor. But in Portugal, it’s a big difference of the type of track, and here in the stadium. In this place, you need to really power from the start, the 300 meter start line, and you need the horsepower. But from the other side, with more torque, I feel good with the car.

With only one day of track time, Sunday, have you done any other testing this week? Does having everything on one day help or hurt you?

I tested the car three days ago at a track in Barcelona, but it’s different than here. I didn’t test, for example, the jump. And always it’s difficult, racing in one place, to make only a few laps to test, maybe four, five, six laps to test? Then after, we’re racing. But for everybody it’s the same. And I need to also look at that, adapt fast to the new situation. For me, it’s not bad. I think racing in the desert, it’s improvisation, and maybe for me it’s better like that when not everybody knows it perfect. But I think that for me, the focus is to try and enjoy the great moment in Barcelona, in my town with my friends and the fans. It’s nice really to be here.

Do you have any goals or expectations for Sunday’s event? Is there any pressure from being the hometown driver?

From my racing in the desert when I started to win, you feel a little bit of pressure when you like to win. But here, no, it’s a race to enjoy the moment and enjoy the spectacle, enjoy the fans. To stay with the fast guys is my goal.

Photo credit: Alison Merion Padron