Many interesting details emerged during the past week in the world of rally. Here’s a condensed recap of what’s up:
Pastrana wins LSPR, wants to do awesome things with rally cars – After wrapping up the Rally America championship at the Ojibwe Forests Rally, Subaru Rally Team USA driver Travis Pastrana was allowed to let loose at the final rally of the year, and let loose he did. Driving flat out, Pastrana was spectacular, hitting 121 miles per hour at one point on stage! The Canadian crew of Atoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard was reppin’ the canucks south of the border, coming in second place, while Ken Block drove his production class Subaru (all of his open class cars are broken) to third position.
To follow up on his fourth consecutive title, Pastrana apparently is going to try and one-up his teammate Ken Block in the area of crazy rally car antics. On new year’s eve, Red Bull is hosting their No Limits stunt, in which Pastrana will attempt to jump his Subaru 270 feet off of a pier in Long Beach, California and land on a barge. Yeah, he’s crazy.
Ken Block is going all euro on us – Possibly the biggest news in rally last week was the news that Ken Block is attempting to procure the funds to run selected events in the WRC next year, with ex-factory Subaru WRC driver Chris Atkinson driving the other half of what hopefully become the Monster Energy Drink World Rally Team. The plan is to buy some 2009 spec Ford Focus WRC cars, which are based on the cool euro focus that Ford doesn’t think we deserve here in North America. They will run a few events in the Focus in 2010 before switching to the slower, but way cheaper to run Fiesta S2000 for the 2011 season. Good luck to the Monsters. They’re gonna need it to beat the euros on their own turf.
Rallycross is coming to America, X Games fans rejoice – Did you enjoy the rally racing on the X Games? If you didn’t, stop reading, cause you’re gonna hate what I say next. Moving on. The Rally-America Championship has decided to end their 2010 season early to accommodate North America’s newest way to break your rally car. Starting in September, there will be three “european style” rallycross races going down at the New Jersey Motorsport Park in Millville, NJ. The idea is to have an X Games style track, with a combination of gravel and paved surfaces, and a jump or two to shake things up. The fun/potentially disastrous part is this: wheel to wheel competition. Six cars will race at a time, in three minute heats. This will no doubt be mayhem, and this blogger will hopefully be there to catch all the action. I’m thinking of bringing a big box of Subaru fenders, doors and lights down with me to cover my costs.
To give you an idea of how intense this style of rally can get, I present the evidence below:
News sources autoblog, Rally Buzz
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This answers a few questions about the Block situation. This is not a full Ford effort then?