Driving Sports

After a season and a half plagued by broken hardware, crashes, and every frustration you can imagine, Subaru Rally Team USA’s Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino finally got the ride they’ve been dreaming about at this year’s Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally.

Set amidst lovely north-central Pennsylvania valleys, STPR is known for its smooth clay roads and fast stages. Organizers also arranged to end each day with an extensive Super Special stage at Tioga County Fairgrounds.  The Fairgrounds doubles as the service park for the first day’s events, and every person in the county turns up to watch.

Going into this year’s STPR, Block carried 1 victory at 100 Acre Wood and 3 DNFs at Sno*Drift, Olympus, and Oregon Trail. It was do or die time for the boys in blue.

Several teams had personnel changes for the event, including top contender Andrew “ACP” Comrie-Picard, who imported his co-driver, Marshall Clarke, from the P-WRC. Clarke is a veteran of the 2008 X Games and over 400 rallies worldwide, and sat in for ACP’s regular partner Robbie Durant for this rally.

The usual front-runners were also in attendance, including defending champion Travis Pastrana and Christian Edstrom, Bill Bacon and Peter Watt, Dave Mirra and defending champion co-driver Derek Ringer. To add some spice to the event, the Swedish P-WRC team of Patrik Sandell and Emil Axelsson entered the rally in a 2007 Subaru Impreza.

Sandell and Axelsson had an eventful week, losing an engine in practice. A new stock WRX engine was brought in and the rally suddenly became uncertain for the team that had been expected to run strongly for the podium and an X Games invitation. They lost that engine in short order, and were out of the rally.

On the clay road surfaces of STPR, any moisture on the ground can make the roads as slick as ice. But Friday afternoon’s first stages, run on Waste Management land, were known to be rough and rocky, with the potential to take cars out of the race early.

As if to emphasize that point, the 2WD points leaders Dillon Van Way and Benjamin Slocum broke their 2002 Ford Focus on the first stage. "It's got some tight stuff and really gnarly bumps and jumps," Van Way said before the stage began.

Also broken on the Waste Management stages were Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard, who popped off a turbo hose. Then new contenders Andi Mancin and Ryszard Ciupka broke a brake line. Finally, Pastrana/Edstrom broke their car, too. "We broke the suspension on the second corner of Stage 2, so we had no front damping all the way through the stage. It was a challenging stage," Edstrom said.

Through it all, Comrie-Picard and Clarke barely escaped with their car intact: "The stage is super tricky - lots of gotchas. We nearly rolled on the way in and we nearly flipped on the way out. We dragged on the nose for a while. Mitsubishis fly nose-down! We had the second-fastest time on the way out, but Ken Block was just on fire," Comrie-Picard said.

When the dust settled, it was Block/Gelsomino with the fast time on the first stages, and then they never looked back. At the end of Stage 1, Pastrana/Edstrom were approximately 10 seconds behind. The 2006 Mitsubishi Evo of William Bacon and Peter Watt was third, and Andrew "ACP" Comrie-Picard and Marshall Clarke were fourth in their Mitsubishi Evo.

"I was actually surprised [to be leading] because we drove real conservatively on some areas because I broke the car in there last year. The car felt really good, I felt good, and coming back up the stage went really well," Block said.

And that’s how it went for the rest of the rally. Block/Gelsomino won the first 6 stages, then Pastrana/Edstrom won two stages, then Block/Gelsmino won two more. Bacon/Watt won a single stage, and then Pastrana/Edstrom won the final two. Of the 5 stages Block/Gelsomino did not win outright, they finished second twice and third three times.

All told, it was a commanding performance. Even after suffering a 30 second penalty for speeding on a transit, Block/Gelsomino enjoyed a 1 minute, 12 second lead over Pastrana/Edstrom by the end of the rally. Bacon/Watt finished third, 2 minutes and 58.9 seconds behind Block/Gelsomino.

ACP had a tough weekend, battling both his car and the event stewards. At the start of the rally, no provision was made for fueling the rally cars. ACP pulled into the fueling area and gassed up before heading out. The stewards faulted the team with an illegal service and assessed a 10-minute penalty. Then on Stage 4, the affable Canadian suffered a “soft ¾ roll” that took out the Mitsubishi’s windshield. ACP and Clarke pushed the car back onto its wheels and continued. They replaced the windshield at the next service, but their troubles weren’t over yet. The team was assessed another 10 minute penalty for illegal service when they were forced to work on their car at a control point before a competition stage.

One of the highlights of this year’s STPR was the appearance of yet another crossover athlete - Supercross rider Brian Deegan, a founding member of the Metal Mulisha and experienced CORR off-road racer, drove his first rally. On Day 2, he and co-driver Chrissie Beavis took their 2004 STI for an extended test flight.

"The exhaust broke, and the car started sounding really mean, like Brian's CORR truck, and so he started going faster and faster. We caught quite a bit of airtime - it rolled up and just launched itself backwards through the air - when you see the marks where it's coming around the corner and how far it flew to, it's just nuts. It's absolutely crazy," Beavis said as the crew worked to repair the damage in time for the final Super Special Stage.

Deegan had his own assessment of rally driving, relative to other pursuits: "I thought trophy truck drivers were really talented, but I think rally driving is where you really learn to drive. Rally drivers are better than anyone else," he said.

As the darkness deepened on the final Super Special stage of the weekend, Pastrana closed the show with a fast lap, but it was Block and Gelsomino who tasted victory. Second place went to Pastrana/Edstrom, and the podium was rounded out with a pair of newcomers – William Bacon and Peter Watt of Canada celebrated their first podium finish in a Rally America event.

In Super Production, the class win went to Piotr Wiktorczyk and Grzegorz Dorman in their 2007 Subaru Impreza WRX STi. Second place went to Patrick Moro and Jeremy Wimpey in their 2005 Subaru STI, and third place to Travis and Terry Hanson in their 2007 Subaru Impreza WRX STI.

In the hard-fought 2WD class, victory was claimed by Chris Greenhouse and Don DeRose 1995 Plymouth Neon, and second place by Gary Wiggin and Christopher Duplessis in a 1991 Volkswagen GTI.

Rally America action stays in the East for another month before heading to Los Angeles for the X Games, and the action resumes on July 17-18 in Bethel, Maine for the New England Forest Rally.