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.
Top Speed previously reported that racing driver and television host Tiff Needell and popular English television star, John Barrowman had been involved in a car accident in a rally prepped Subaru while filming a slot for the English automotive program Fifth Gear. Before we only had a few still images to show you, but today, Fifth Gear revealed the video of the crash.
You may remember Ken Block’s crazy gymkhana Subaru or his latest remix rendition, but what would it be like if the BBC’s production staff had chance to film their own rendition of a Ken Block video? Watch and see as the DC Shoes owner and rally driver takes Top Gear’s James May out for a spin, literally, and do a little racing with dirt bike champion Ricky Carmichael.
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.
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?
One thing that Tiff left out of the instructions was how to handle a jump. The driver of this Subaru Impreza looked like a pro flying through the air at over 100 MPH. It’s a shame that the Japanese automaker withdrew from WRC competition; they definitely established themselves as a serious automotive competitor through the all terrain racing series. Hopefully through their partnership with Toyota, the upcoming rear wheel drive sport compact will add a little more of that bad boy attitude back into their lineup.
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