Live Rally Blog from XG15
Live Rally Blog from XG15
July 30, 2009, 7:22 PM
By: Brian Kamenetzky
Brian Kamenetsky here. I'll be your source for all things rally over the next four days. Where to begin? Well, for you, a good spot is our lead-up rally blog. Get caught up and I'll see you back here when the action starts. Read the live blog here.
Tanner Foust Pimps a Saab
Tanner Foust explains how to get your commuter car in X Games condition.
July 9, 2009, 1:54 PM
By: Brian Kamenetzky
On the outside rally cars look like the street version of the same car you might buy at the local dealership— Your ride is also sponsored and skinned by Red Bull or Rockstar, right? For newbies to the rally world it can be tough to know exactly what makes these cars different. To get a feel for it, I asked rally and X Games vet Tanner Foust to fill me in on what I'd need to do to get my sensible commuter car X Games rally ready. It's a long checklist:
HOW TO TURN A 1999 SAAB 9-3 INTO A RALLY CAR FOR X GAMES:
"You have the turbo engine; you'd want to make it all-wheel drive, which would be a little difficult. But it's a tough car, which is good. The one problem with the Saab is that it's a heavy car. So probably what you would do is you would literally take the body and the chassis of the car and go find yourself a drive line out of, say, a Ford Focus rally car. You'd completely take out all of the Saab under the skin and put in a Ford suspension, drive train, and racing transmission under the skin of your Saab. That would be the only way to do it.
That'll run you an easy $250,000. Then probably a good season of racing to get it up to speed.
Tanner Foust explains how to pimp my ride.
There's a huge amount of preparation that goes into these cars, even though they look a lot like the street car on the outside. The suspensions are very high tech. They have to be, to be able to handle that 70 foot jump. The engines produce a huge amount of power, even though we're restricted to the amount of air flow that we can have in the cars. So there's a lot of money that goes into these engines to make them work with a 40mm restrictor. Then, of course, there's safety equipment. You have to have a full FIA approved roll cage and have all the equipment and reinforcing that you need to withstand a 100 mph crash.
And the transmissions are dog box transmissions, meaning you don't really need the clutch, and the drive shafts are all different, and these are all-wheel drive versions. There's a lot of electronics involved. You can spend a quarter million dollars on one of these cars really easily, so obviously that money goes somewhere. But fundamentally, the character of the stock car still comes out in the race car, even with all the technology and stuff in there. The Subarus still drive like Subarus, the Mitsubishis still drive like Mitsubishis."
I might argue that after all those modifications your average Swede might not recognize my Saab, but that's not really the point. The important thing is the blueprint (modifications that seemingly push repairs to the AC panel that broke last summer down on the list). Now I just have to find a quarter mil, then convince my wife to let me spend it. Easy peasy.
Another X, Another Pastranapalooza?
All eyes may be on Travis—again—but could this year's race go to another 2-wheeling-veteran?
June 19, 2009, 8:23 PM
By: Brian Kamenetzky
Bill Lockwood
Brian Deegan looking the part at the STPR Rally in early June.
If something draws interest from both Brian Deegan and The New York Times, it's fair to say there's some potentially broad appeal at work. Such is the case with rally car racing, now a staple at X Games, which is hosting an increasingly ritzy crowd. The crossover trail blazed by Travis Pastrana (used to wear flannel, ride dirt bikes, produce X Games medals like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold, now rides four wheels with ... the same results, really) has been traveled by Dave Mirra, Kenny Bartram and now Deegan, who had been racing trucks in the Lucas Oil Off Road Series and made his rally debut at the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally in early June. Assuming he drives at X, the Metal Mulisha's main man will be more sideshow and fruitful source of quotes than medal contender. Instead, all eyes, as always, will be on Pastrana, golden boy of XG 14 and current leader of the Rally America points standings.
But he'll have challengers. Ken Block won at STPR , all while running the DC Shoes empire (yes, you are a lazy, lazy, freeloading waste of a person by comparison—don't feel bad, because so am I). Tanner Foust won in 2007, and would just as soon spoil this year's edition of Pastranapalooza. Andrew Comrie-Picard is Canadian, and therefore wily. And it's important to note that what happens on the circuit isn't automatically reflective of the Rally X-perience (Note: They weren't a band). Unlike the longer, stage heavy, car chewing stuff these guys see on tour, the asphalt/dirt combo track at Home Depot Center is short and fast, but still with plenty of chances to wreck a perfectly good vehicle. Little mistakes are magnified, big ones generally mean elimination.
You'll want to watch from start to finish, and when you're not watching, you'll want to read about it. That's where this space comes in. I'll be your X Games Rally host, bringing updates from the track and pits alike. All the news you'll need, plus some that you probably don't but hopefully will enjoy nonetheless. So bookmark this page. Tweet about it. Mention it to a few folks at your next
flash mob .
And when the time comes, check back in to follow what should be a killer competition.
