With the new Ford Fiesta enjoying all sorts of motor sport success be it at Pikes Peak or a made for TV special stage it looks like the little all wheel drive rally car will have a tremendous amount of success in the U.S. market. As for their latest achievement bringing home the gold at X-Games 15, the blue oval campaigned a trio of Fiesta’s hedging their bets with the Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack, previous X-Games Rally gold medalist Tanner Foust and a very fast rookie with X-Games freestyle motocross veteran Brian Deegan as their latest Fiesta Movement efforts.
All three competitors fought hard, and all three had their fair share of difficulties, however they worked as a team until the very end and when the dust settled in the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles it was a red, white and blue Fiesta that took home the championship. So with all the success of the 800 HP all wheel drive rally car, does that mean we will see a few specially developed wide body Ford Racing Parts or even a turbocharged Ford Fiesta Rally Sport model. With the almost uncertainty of seeing the beloved Focus RS on this side of the pond anytime soon, perhaps the smaller more efficient member of the fun to drive Ford family can add some excitement into their upcoming lineup.
There were a few interesting match-ups competing in the fourth ever X-Games rally competition earlier today. Aside from introducing America’s television watching public to the all terrain form of production car based racing and injecting a much-needed boost of exposure for the Rally America series, the story was not just about manufacturers competing for a gold medal, but the diversity of extreme athletes competing in the turbocharged all wheel drive rally cars which ranged from an Indy 500 champion to the leader of the freestyle motocross faction, the Metal Mulisha along with the other rookie and BMX X-Games gold medalist Dave Mirra.
Ever since a few of the manufacturer backed teams dropped out of World Rally Championship competition, Ford has been the only major car builder to campaign an entrant and the experience showed, leaving a trio of Fiestas to take on the sole Subaru of last year’s X-Games Rally Champion Travis Pastrana. For a moment there was hope that it would be a classic battle of Subaru vs. Mitsubishi, however Tanner Foust’s Rockstar Fiesta made quick work of Andi Mancin’s clean EVO IX and it was #199 Travis Pastrana who took out the last EVO hopeful, Andrew Comrie-Picard, despite the EVO VIII driver finally figuring out the 70 foot dirt jump. The Swedish ex-Indy Racing League driver Kenny Brack then flew past the BMX legend Dave Mirra’s STI, what was amazing was the amount of speed that the little Fiesta had going down the straight, unfortunately Mirra came off the jump with an extra hop and never quite recovered. He continued to fight the course for the rest of the run and proved once again that smooth equals speed and it was Brack who had it that run.
The last round of the quarterfinals pitted the amateur filmmaker Ken Block against the previous generation Ford Fiesta of Brian Deegan, Block had put the car on its lid in practice and Deegan had experienced a loose charge pipe that was supposed to be delivering boost from the turbocharger to the engine. The pair looked to be evenly matched, Deegan after all qualified fourth amongst a field of rally racing veterans, at least until the gremlins showed back up. However Ken Block hit a barrier before the big jump that he wasn’t able to carry enough speed to bridge the 70 foot gap. He instead decided to go around and was immediately disqualified, sending the slower Fiesta straight into the semifinals.
The X-Games has always been an action sports spectacle, ushering in new extreme athletes and introducing the television watching public to never before seen feats of human achievement. One of the more recent additions to ESPN’s X-Games is rally car racing, an event that has created such memorable moments as Collin McRae rolling his golden Suabru on the final jump before going on to finish in second.
For the X-Games 15 competitors will compete on a 2 mile special stage setup that runs through a dirt filled stadium and the surrounding parking lot just like last year. Except this year the drivers will be riding solo, the television experts at ESPN have decided that the co-driver’s seat would be better occupied by two individuals that have ridden shotgun in a rally car before, but this time Chrissie Beavis and Jen Horsey will be going along strictly as ESPN analysts. X-Games producer Phil Orlins suggests, "they’ll be the ultimate firsthand observers.”
Some things to keep in mind when watching these rally prepped machines fly through the air and slide around the tarmac is that while the Rally America series requires a 34 mm turbo inlet restrictor, the X-Games allows a larger 40 mm unit. This means that the rally cars will be making more horsepower and torque allowing even higher speeds around the made for TV course. Even though most of the racing surface is on tarmac, the X-Games requires the cars to run on gravel tires, meaning that the cars will be sliding around a lot more than necessary, but that just makes for better television which can be seen on Sunday, August 2 from 3 PM to 6 PM Eastern on ABC.
Continued after the jump with Collin McRae roll video.
The Ford Mustang has never set a set of slicks onto the high banked ovals of the NASCAR circuit, that is until now. Brian Wolfe, the director of Ford North American Motorsport division has announced that things area bout to change. For the 2010 season, Ford will debut a NASCAR spec Mustang as part of the sereis’s “new car” limited rollout for the 2010 Nationwide Series.
“We had been talking with NASCAR for some time about Mustang as part of its vision for a muscle car rollout for the Nationwide Series. We both saw it as a way of differentiating the series from Sprint Cup,” said Wolfe. “We loved the idea, so we jumped on the chance to extend Mustang’s racing legacy to a new series reaching a huge and loyal audience. Mustang has dominated other forms of racing, including NHRA drag racing, Grand-Am Cup road racing, and Formula D drifting, and now it’s coming to NASCAR Nationwide.
Even if it will only be a Mustang body shell and not a complete race car it is still a step in the right direction for both companies. Ford hopes to take advantage of the old win on Sunday, sell on Monday strategy; while NASCAR needs to step away from the current trend of every car looking exactly the same, aside from the decal package. However it would be nice to see some of that racing technology make its way into a production version, just like the famed Ford 429 Cobra Jet V8 from the 1960s.
The blue oval recently introduced a highly modified version of the Ford Fiesta that competed in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with rally aces Andreas Eriksson and Marcus Grönholm at a press launch in Colorado springs back on June 14. Neither driver was bashful about showing off what the lightweight all wheel drive Fiestas could do with their 800 HP turbocharged 2.0 Liter four cylinder engines.
Both the Finnish two time World Rally Champion Grönholm and the Swedish Eriksson then stepped out of their cars and took off their helmets to say a few words to the crowd, the conversation mainly focussed around the team’s tight 3 day training schedule. In a recent conversation with the Fiesta Brand Manager Sam de la Garza, he was most excited about the whole program came together so successfully in such a very short period of time. You can expect to see a pair of caged Fiesta’s competing in ESPN’s X-Games 15 a little later on this week.
The Spanish automaker SEAT has just released a new commercial to promote their World Touring Car Championship season. Having won the series back in 2008, the company has big hopes for 2009, with Finnish driver Hekki Kovalenien behind the wheel of a SEAT Leon TDI WTCC.
Just last week, classic racers were screaming up the hill outside Lord March’s estate at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Have a look back at a previous year’s festival when the Pikes Peak champion Rod Millen brought his record setting Toyota Tacoma race truck to England.
Audi celebrated their centennial at the Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend and Top Speed previously showed you a teaser image from the German automaker’s centerpiece at the event. Commemorating 100 years of automobile production and over 70 years of rich racing heritage, the four ringed automaker showed off competition proven models like the classic Auto Union Grand Prix cars, Audi Sport Quattro based rally and touring cars as well as their latest alternatively fueled Le Mans competitor. However Audi’s the crown was the sculpture in front of Lord March’s home that showed where the Germans have been and where they are going. At one end pointed an Auto Union streamliner and at the other a V10 powered R8 super car shooting up into the heavens. The two high performance machines are linked by a stretch of road that resemble the historic Avus race track with it’s highly banked, nearly 180 degree curve.
Meanwhile the rest of Audi’s racing fleet was busy entertaining the crowd making passes up the 1.8 Mile hill climb course. Formula 1 and Le Mans legend, Jacky Ickx, and Pink Floyd drummer and Auto Union enthusiast Nick Mason, drove a pair of the 1950s race cars up the hill, the first was a full blown Type D Dual Compressor driven by the professional and D Type with the drummer behind the wheel. This was also the last running of the mostly original 1938 Type D before it goes on permanent display at the Audi Tradition’s museum in Ingolstadt, Germany.
Ford will be bringing the Fiesta Movement to the racetrack when a few of the European minded city cars are campaigned at X Games 15 at the end of this month. However the compact rally racer is slated to make its North American motor sport debut at the upcoming Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado. The vehicle’s run up the hill is guaranteed to be more than just a shakedown run.
The Swedish Olsbergs Motor Sport Evolution (MSE) team has decided to prepare a pair of three door Ford Fiesta’s for the event that will be televised around the globe here in the U.S. on ABC and ESPN. It is fitting that they have chosen someone who speaks their language to get behind the wheel, Swedish driver Kenny Brack. The other driver has not yet been announced. All three Fiestas will compete in the Rally America Open Class. That should be no problem for the 1999 Indianapolis 500 winner who will be making his X Games debut. Brack retired from motor sports in 2006, but has decided to come back in a Ford Fiesta. Could we see the 17 year old rally phenom, Markus Eriksson sitting in the other car?
There is no sight as beautiful as a group of Italian super cars lining up on the grid all wearing enormous GT wings. While we all wish to be in the driving shoes of the individuals who are lucky enough to have the opportunity to compete in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo. Check out the video for more of a behind the scenes look at what it takes to get the cars ready off track and competitive on it.
Picture Gallery
Post a comment
RSS -
Webmaster free news |