The World Drifting Champion Rhys Millen recently raced his new highly modified RMR poweredHyundai Genesis coupe up the 12.4 mile hill climb course that consists of over 150 turns, many of which have no safety barrier and the consequences of running wide is a quick trip down the side of the mountain. However the multi disciplined driver had no prooblem tckling the hill, and broke the record for a 2WD Time Attack production based car in his 17th attempt conquering Pikes Peak, reaching the finish line in 12 minutes and 9.39 seconds.
The BBC’s Top Gear is known for coming up with some very out there tests to put cars though, except none have been as insane as this. In another test pitting man against machine, the boys from Britain are putting a rally prepped Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII against a world championship downhill freestyle skater. Now the 16 year old’s plank of wood is a purpose built off road racing vehicle complete with a suspension and large knobby off road tires. You would think that it would be no problem for the the Evo being driven by Ben Collins, but it’s true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and the former Stig’s Lancer is having a bit of a hard time getting around the moguls on the green downhill race course. However Richard Hammond has something that might solve that problem in the form of a Paris Dakar racer, the Bowler Wildcat.
Our chat with Subaru left us sensing that the Japanese automaker is moving their lineup in a much more luxurious direction than it has in current years, now there is nothing wrong with this approach to selling cars, in fact it is a pretty smart one, but what about the boy racer in all of us that lusted after owning the same blue and gold car that Colin McRae raced to multi WRC championships. One of our concerns with the automotive arm of Fuji Heavy Industries withdrawing from the World Rally Championship is that their cars could lose that competitive performance edge, but the entry level Impreza has been replaced by the more spacious Legacy as Subaru’s GT300 competitor in the Super GT championship and a much more mundane version is currently being campaigned in the Koni Challenge Series here in the U.S. which makes sense because even the old WRC car was a Legacy. So with all this attention being paid to the larger vehicles in their lineup what is going to happen to the STi?
When I told the Subaru representative that my favorite of all time is the mighty 22B STi, he knew exactly what myself, and most WRX enthusiasts, were looking for in the next version of the best bargain sports car on the market. The 22B was built back in 1998 to celebrate the automaker’s 40th anniversary and by that point, multiple World Rally Championships. This special edition Impreza started out as a lightweight WRX RA coupe shell and then had a set of much wider rear arches to match the boxed front fenders that housed special gold BBS wheels, which widened the Subaru’s track and made it look just as bad as the WRC car.
Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo has always been at the forefront of video game realism when it comes to how the virtual machines are able to go, turn and stop like their production versions; however there has always been one thing that the Play Station based automobiles wouldn’t ever do was take a hit like the real thing. So when Kazunori Yamauchi set out to create the fifth installment of the Gran Turismo franchise he vowed that this version would finally include crash damage as we can see by the poor display of finesse by the person holding the controller of this rally prepped STi. By the looks of things, despite the drastic change in the car’s aerodynamics hasn’t affected the car’s speed so much as the poor driving.
If you missed the 2009 X Games, then you missed all of the dirt jumping, pavement drifting and bumper dropping action that took place at the Home Depot Center and the surrounding parking lot. In short, Indy 500 Champion Kenny Brack took home the win in an 800 HP Ford Fiesta, beating names like Pastrana and ACP in rally prepped Subaru ImprezaSTIs and Mitsubishi LancerEvolutions.
After checking out the championship round have a look at the videos of the 70 foot jump and the rest of the fun you missed after the jump.
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 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 Ford Motor Company has decided to unveil a racing version of the compact Fiesta at one of the oldest automotive competitions in North America, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and created this short film in the spirit of the Ari Vatanen Classic "Climb Dance." The blue oval recruited a rally racing ringer, Marcus Gronholm for the nearly 13 mile, 156 turn course that ends at 14,110 feet above sea level. Although they were aiming to break into the record books the team was unsuccessful this time, but even still, it’s not a bad showing that the 800 HP 2.0 Liter turbocharged Duratec inline four cylinder engine powered Fiesta made it all the way up the hill on its first attempt.
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When I told the Subaru representative that my favorite of all time is the mighty 22B STi, he knew exactly what myself, and most WRX enthusiasts, were looking for in the next version of the best bargain sports car on the market. The 22B was built back in 1998 to celebrate the automaker’s 40th anniversary and by that point, multiple World Rally Championships. This special edition Impreza started out as a lightweight WRX RA coupe shell and then had a set of much wider rear arches to match the boxed front fenders that housed special gold BBS wheels, which widened the Subaru’s track and made it look just as bad as the 
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