Driving Sports

Travis Pastrana came to Bemidji, Minnesota for the Ojibwe Forests Rally fresh from a win at the 14th X Games, where he bested the cream of the Rally America contenders and the dark horse team of Niall McShea and Marshall Clarke. McShea and Clarke came over from Ireland to win July’s New England Forest rally and secure a wild card spot in the X Games.

It’s been a turbulent year for the championship. In the snows of January and February, it looked as though 2008 would be the year for Ken Block and Alessandro Gelsomino to claim the championship. But a string of bad luck cost them points mid-season and for a while, Canadian Mitsubishi pilot Andrew Comrie-Picard and co-driver Marc Goldfarb held the lead with consistent podium finishes. But their luck changed as well, and after a spectacular crash at the X Games, Comrie-Picard was not able to make the show in Minnesota. Pastrana and co-driver Derek Ringer took third in New England, but managed to secure a points lead in the Rally America championship season.

Also out of the game for Ojibwe were Tanner Foust/Christine Beavis, Matthew Johnson/Jeremy Wimpey, and Patrick Moro/Mike Rossey – all victims of damage at the X Games.

Ojibwe is known for fast, smooth roads and fabulous scenery. But rallying on fast roads has its own traps, as the tight competition at the top of the boards forces every team to take risks if they want to stand on the podium at the end.

There are 15 stages in the Ojibwe Forest, starting with a super special stage at Bemidji Speedway. Pastrana/Ringer took the stage win here, followed by the resurgent team of “Cowboy” Kenny Bartram and Dennis Hotson.  That set the stage for the rest of the rally, with Block/Gelsomino winning 7 of the remaining 14 stages and Pastrana/Ringer winning 6 more. The only stage of the rally not won by one or the other of the SRTUSA cars was the final stage of the event, won by the Rock Star Subaru STI of Andrew Pinker and Robbie Durant.

But there was plenty of action between the first and the final stage. It took only three stages for Pinker/Durant to come into service dragging their left rear wheel. The team hit a large stone (known informally as a “BFR” among rally teams) in the roadway and broke the rear suspension. Young phenom Kyle Sarasin and co-driver Mikael Johansson found themselves in third place before the end of Day 1, delivering one of their best performances all year.

At the end of 8 stages comprising Day 1 of the rally, Block/Gelsomino held the lead. About 20 seconds separated them from the second place team of Pastrana/Ringer. Sarasin/Johansson held third, but at a distance of over 3 minutes from the SRTUSA cars. Meanwhile, Pinker/Durant had been steadily working their way back through the field to end the day in fifth position.

The second day of competition seemed to belong entirely to Pastrana/Ringer, but in fact teammates Block/Gelsomino were on their bumpers almost the entire day. Pastrana/Ringer won the first three stages by  just 1.3, 3.0, and 2.8 seconds, respectively. Then Block/Gelsomino won Stage 12 by 3.5 seconds, erasing much of Pastrana/Ringer’s gains and maintaining their lead.

The results of the final three stages have a twist that requires an explanation of Rally America’s scoring procedure. At each service interval, each rally team turns in their score card from the previous stages and is issued a new card for the next few stages. This allows rally officials to provide current scoring information throughout the event. However, if a team does not turn in a scorecard for a set of stages, they are not scored on those stages, even though rally officials have the original records from the stage timing crews.

Block/Gelsomino hit a tree on the final stage of the rally, and though they were uninjured, the car was unable to continue. In fact, after a few minutes, the tree collapsed into the road and ended the competition entirely. The balance of the stage was run as a transit. Because the final three stages all used the same scorecard and Block/Gelsomino did not turn in their final card, we have no scoring information for stages 13 and 14 and cannot say whether Block/Gelsomino would have won the rally had it not been for their crash. But it’s safe to assume that given their performance throughout the rally, they were in the lead when they crashed.

But in the end, that’s a matter for the trivia books, because this victory by Pastrana/Ringer has effectively delivered Pastrana’s third consecutive Rally America season championship. In the end, Pastrana/Ringer were joined on the podium by Sarasin/Johansson in second, and Pinker/Durant in third. Also worth noting, Piotr Wiktorczyk and Christine Beavis finished in fourth place and Bartram finished in fifth with Matthew Johnson’s usual co-driver Jeremy Wimpey in the passenger seat. Dennis Hotson had fallen ill in the course of the weekend and Wimpey was there to step in.

Production GT honors went to Heath Nunnemacher and veteran co-driver Kim DeMotte in a 2002 WRX. Group 5 was taken by Doug Shepherd and Karen Wagner in a 2003 Dodge Neon SRT4. The win in Group 2 went to Silvio Alva and Benjamin Slocum in a 1994 Nissan Sentra SE-R. Production was won by Jan and Jody Zedril in a 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer ES.

In order to lose the championship now, Pastrana/Ringer would have to DNF both of the remaining rallies, and either Block/Gelsomino or Comrie-Picard/Goldfarb would have to win both rallies to change that result. But as we’ve seen this year, stranger things can and do happen in the Rally America series. The next event is Rally Colorado on September 13-14, and the season winds up in Michigan in October.

Photo: Lars Gange, rally.subaru.com