Driving Sports

In Rally Racing, it’s not enough to have the best ride and the best service crew, and the best in-car team. You can’t just set ‘em up and knock ‘em down in this business, because anything can happen at any time. After the top teams fought the 2007 season to a razor’s edge finish, the 2008 season has started up again in the same thrilling, unpredictable fashion.

Subaru Rally Team USA stars Travis Pastrana and Christian Edstrom took the final event win of the 2007 season with just a 3.5-second margin of victory. With that win came the Rally America National Championship for the year. In the brief off-season, Pastrana competed in the WRC Production class at Rally GB and finished a humbling 11th. So he’s back to the 2008 Rally America series with two challenges in front of him - to defend his back-to-back championships in a series that gets tougher every year, and to hone his skills for further WRC opportunities.

Australian Andrew Pinker and co-driver Robbie Durant finished the 2007 season in second place, a total of 1 minute, 33.5 seconds behind Pastrana at the critical final event. Pastrana’s SRTUSA teammates Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino finished the season in third place. The wild card in 2007 was the team of Tanner Foust and Chrissie Beavis, who ended the season in fantastic form. If the duo had not missed a critical pair of events due to Foust’s drifting schedule, the championship might have been theirs.

But 2008 is starting out with much more than a repeat of the same closely-matched teams. A number of strong teams have moved into the Open class to contend for the win. Leading the pack are two-time Production GT champions Matt Johnson and Jeremy Wimpey. With their extensive experience in the Subaru WRX, look for Johnson/Wimpey to make a serious challenge this year.

18 year old Kyle Sarasin and co-driver Mikael Johansson are moving up to Open class from Group 5, where they won the 2007 rookies of the year and took second in the Group 5 national championship race. The young standouts are certain to put some pressure on the top teams this year in their 1994 Impreza. The dark horse teams of Piotr Wiktorczyk and Martin Brady in a 2002 WRX or Will Corry and Alexander Kihurani in a 2006 STI may also make an impression on the standings this year.

Also in the hunt is the Canadian team of Antoine L’Estage, paired with top co-driver Nathalie Richard in a highly-modified Hyundai Tiburon. Fellow Canadian Andrew Comrie-Picard will again team with Marc Goldfarb to try for the championship in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.

Coming in from the X Games world is BMX racing star Dave Mirra, who is teamed with veteran co-driver Alan Ockwell for the season. Mirra is driving a Subaru supported by Vermont SportsCar and will share service crew with SRTUSA, but is not a formal member of the factory team.

The new teams gunning for the top are joined by all the top finishers from 2007, so the field was thick going into January’s Sno*Drift event in northern Michigan. Conditions were typical - snow and ice, and lots of it.

To set the start order for the first event of the year, the teams of Pastrana/Edstrom, Block/Gelsomino, Foust/Beavis, and Pinker/Durant were subjected to a random draw. Foust/Beavis won the draw and elected to start first. Because of the fresh snow, going first is not necessarily a great advantage. Pushing aside heavy snow can slow a car, with later runners taking advantage of a packed surface. "We were so slow, I can't believe it," said Foust.

It didn’t take long for the frozen conditions to claim their first victim. Pinker/Durant lost the engine in their STI a scant mile into the very first stage, taking them out of the rally and perhaps out of the running for the top spot in 2008.

Pastrana/Edstrom won the first stage of the year, besting second place L’Estage/Richard by 8.6 seconds on the 7.17-mile run. Block/Gelsomino were another 1.1 seconds behind the Canadians, with a wide gap on fourth place Foust/Beavis, likely because of their charitable snowplowing service.

Sno*Drift begins on Friday afternoon, with the first car taking the stages just prior to 3 p.m. Stages continue well into the chilly night; the first car starts the sixth and final stage of the day around 8 p.m. Pastrana/Edstrom won three of the day’s stages, Block/Gelsomino another two, and Comrie-Picard/Goldfarb won a single stage. At the end of day 1, Sno*Drift was shaping up to be another Subaru Rally Team juggernaut, and potentially the beginning of a dominating year for the defending champions. As the teams went to bed for the night, Pastrana/Edstrom led the rally by 45 seconds, followed by Block/Gelsomino, and with L’Estage/Richard in third place. 

But a new day brings new chances, and on the slippery stages of a Michigan winter rally, anything can happen. In the morning, it looked as though the competition for the win would be between the SRTUSA cars. Block/Gelsomino won two of the first three stages, with Stage 8 going to L’Estage/Richard. But then on Stage 10, Block and Gelsomino’s luck ran out - the pair went off the road on a sharp left over a crest and found themselves high-centered on a frozen berm. "We just got sucked into the snow," Block said.

Block and Gelsomino lost 10 minutes liberating their car, succeeding just as Matt Johnson and Jeremy Wimpey stopped to help them. That delay took Block/Gelsomino out of the fight for the podium, and the stage win went to L’Estage/Richard.  But as if to prove that they weren’t the sort to give up, Block/Gelsomino went on to win the next stage and the final four stages of the day.

On Stage 12, it was Foust/Beavis’s turn to get stuck in the snow, and the delay cost the team about 7 minutes, dashing their podium hopes for the event.

Although their teammates were down in the standings, the rally was well in the pockets of  Pastrana/Edstrom. Going into Stage 16, the champs had a 2 minute margin on the rest of the field. But in order to win, you have to make it to the end - and there is no allowance for bad luck. “With a huge lead and just a few miles to the finish, we hit a deer at over 60 mph. It all happened so quickly, we were shocked. The car sustained heavy damage and couldn't continue. Amazingly bad luck,” Pastrana said. Thankfully, Pastrana and Edstrom were not hurt. It’s safe to assume that the high-speed collision didn’t do the deer any good.

With both Block/Gelsomino and Pastrana/Edstrom out of contention for the podium, the field was opened to those other cars who gave consistent performances throughout the event. Going into the final stage of the event, L’Estage/Richard moved into the lead. The pair had finished in the top 4 positions on 15 of the 16 stages of the rally, and won Stages 8 and 10. Comrie-Picard and Goldfarb held onto second place with top 4 finishes on 7 stages, winning only Stage 3. 

In the end, Block and Gelsomino’s victories in the final four stages of the event couldn’t make up their deficit from Stage 10. The rally win went to L’Estage/Richard in their Hyundai Tiburon, followed by Comrie-Picard/Goldfarb in second place in their Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. “I have mixed feelings. I’m happy, but at the same time, I feel so bad for (Pastrana and Edstrom) because they did a great rally. They were the fastest, but we’ll take the win,” L’Estage said.

But the real news of the weekend was with Kyle Sarasin and Mikael Johansson. Coming up from a Group 5 Ford Focus to an Open class Impreza this year, the young duo gave an outstanding performance, consistently finishing each stage well up into the top 10. “Our game plan was to be consistent, try to stay in the race and get a top-10 finish. Some stuff happened, some people went out, and we ended up getting third overall,” Sarasin said. This result should put the sport’s leaders on notice - Watch your mirrors.

Fourth place went to Matt Johnson and Jeremy Wimpey in their first Open class event. With their prodigious Production GT experience and skill at carrying speed in a lower-powered car working for them, look for this team to move up onto the podium soon.

Block and Gelsomino finished the rally in fifth place.

In their first Rally America national championship event, Mirra and Ockwell finished 18th. Not a bad finish for any team’s first big event - to say nothing of an event held in knee-deep snow. With support from Vermont SportsCar and guidance from his friends at SRTUSA, look for Mirra to move up the standings this year.

The Production GT competition was intense, with 6 different teams claiming stage wins for the class. Travis and Terry Hanson won five stages in their 2002 WRX. The teams of Patrick Moro and Mike Rossey in a 2002 WRX and Todd Moberly and Rebecca Greek in a 2003 WRX each won four stages. 

The teams of Evan Cline and Jason Grahn (1991 Mitsubishi Galant VR4), Bryan Pepp and Jerry Stang (2002 WRX), and Nathan & Brandye Conley (2003 WRX Wagon) each took one PGT stage win. When the scores were totaled up, it was Moro/Rossey in first place, followed by Pepp/Stang and then the team of Robert and Mariusz Borowicz, who earned third place with a consistent performance in their 2002 WRX.

The Group 5 and overall 2WD victory went to Christopher Duplessis and Martin Headland in their 1990 Volkswagen GTi, followed overall by Jan and Jody Zedril, who took an impressive Production class win in their 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer ES. No Group 2 or Group N cars finished the national portion of the event.

Sno*Drift is unique as the only true winter rally in the Rally America national season. Results here are not necessarily indicative of the rest of the year, but it’s clear that there are more qualified teams ready to wrestle for the season championship than there were in 2007. This is good news for rally fans, because it means that anything can, and probably will, happen in the months to come. Stay tuned for Round 2 of the 2008 Rally America National Championship, the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood, scheduled for February 22 and 23 in Salem, Missouri. 

Photos: Lars Gange, rally.subaru.com