Rally Cap

Few Rally competitors escaped the wrath of the Dukes Of Hazard-style feature that was the hallmark of the X Games course: the 70-foot gap jump that had no precedent in the history of rally car racing. Earlier in the week, Ramana Lagemann nosed in his landing during practice, skipped once, then flipped straight over onto his roof. Today,
Andrew Comrie-Picard cleared it by inches, "tank slapped" the landing, and broke a left rear link in his axel. Travis Pastrana overshot it big-time and "the whole front mounts, the frame, everything, just snapped," he said. And that was before Sunday's Rally Car Super Special-style Final even started.

Perhaps the only team to come through the jump unscathed were the eventual champions, Tanner Foust and co-driver Chrissie Beavis. They avoided the airborne indiscretions that plagued other teams. Still, Foust and Beavis won the gold medal race without the usual advantages of a functional hand brake.

"This is the ultimate Super Special I've ever seen—with the biggest jump that's ever been in a competition," said driver Ken Block, the silver medalist with co-driver Alessandro Gelsomino. Block knows from big jumps. He recently jumped a car 171 feet for the TV show Stunt Junkies.

"There's no middle ground," said Foust, after hitting it once—and only once—during a practice run before the racing commenced Sunday. "You hit it right and it's like butter. You hit it wrong and it's not just gonna be a hard landing, it's gonna destroy the car."

Hit the jump too slow and competitors risked slamming into the opposite wall of the gap. Hit it too fast and your crew will be rebuilding the whole front-end—to whatever extent that's possible mid-race—ala Pastrana and Lagemann.

"The jump's been on my mind a long time," confessed Lagemann before the start, "and we've had a long time to think about it. Just don't want to jump it short. A little long is a little better than a little short. But when you're actually doing it, the difference between short and long is like seven miles an hour, and honestly that's really, really tough to judge when you're spinning around on dirt lining it all up."

Thanks to a course hold due to Pastrana's face-plant during practice, Rally Car legend Colin McRae didn't even get a chance to hit the jump once prior to the competition. Then, thanks to a rollover of his own creation in during head-to-head racing, he never got to hit it period.

"When you look at it, all you see is that big gap in between," McRae said. "And if you get it wrong, you're gonna be in it. You get it wrong in a normal rally stage on a road, you're just gonna land early. So it's just a matter of getting it right in your head."

Comrie-Picard explained his cased landing: "Part of the problem is the Mitsubishis don't fly as well as the Subarus; they fly a little nose down. So we wanted to go as slow as possible over the jump because any faster and we'd nose in on the downside. So we were trying to go slow and, lo and behold, it was just a little too slow."

Rally legend John Buffum, the most veteran of competitors at age 63, dismissed the jump as "more bark than bite."

"I thought maybe it was too big, too wide or whatever," said Buffum, co-driver for Boris Said. "But I was wrong. It's just fine. No big deal."

Still, he conceded the obstacle represented a unique rallying challenge. "There's no precedent for something this big," he said. "Too much chance of destroying a car. But it is good for the spectacle. And that's what this is really—a microcosm of a rally, with certain elements highlighted, for spectators."

In the end, the jump provided plenty of lift—and then some—for the second year X Games discipline.

"We're here to put on a good show X Games-style," said Foust, "and a 70-foot gap jump with cars that are street legal, that is X Games style right there."

NOTES
•Leading into Sunday's competition, all anyone on Pit Row wanted to talk about was suspension settings, tire pressure, tread depth, transmission differentials, running height, and so on. But when your tires are coming off mid lap (Ken Block); or your skid plate sheers off and green, alien blood is dripping from your radiator (Antoine L'Estage); you slam your rear-end so hard off a jump that the trunk pops open and the windshield-wipers activate (Andy Picker); or you've rolled your super-dooper expensive race car on its side, smashing the windshield in the process (Colin McRae), all that technical to-do somehow seems slightly less important.

•In addition to being a crack mechanic, employment on a Rally team is contingent on one's ability to jury-rig anything back together again. And so it was that thousands of zip ties and miles of tape (duct and otherwise) were gang pressed into service during this week as crews pieced their cars back together again (and again) like so many Humpty Dumpties.

•Heath Frisby, the freestyle snowmobiling bronze medalist from the 2007 Winter X Games, has been hanging around the Rally pit area this week. Might Frisby be the next action-sports youngster, ala Travis Pastrana, to be drawn into Rally's fray? We asked and the Idahoan makes no promises. "I'm just checking it all out," says Frisby. "It's pretty cool."

•During Friday's Rally Car practice session, TV viewers were treated to footage of driver Boris Said spinning laps on the asphalt loop in his No. 60 car. But that wasn't Boris. Boris was in Montreal at a Busch Series race and didn't arrive in California until late Saturday/early Sunday. So just who was that helmeted man driving the No. 60 car? John Buffum, the 63-year-old legend of American (and world) Rally Racing, that's who.

•Tanner Foust said his crack team of mechanics can swap out his car's drive train-transmission and all—in 16 minutes. For the record, other crews were dubious of this claim upon hearing it second-hand.

QUOTES

• "Chrissie is essentially driving the car from the right seat. What's coming out of her book is going out of her mouth into my ears and that goes straight to my hands and feet. I'm really just translating what she says into the car."—Driver Tanner Foust, on his co-driver Chrissie Beavis

• "Last year, that [crash] was great for the whole deal. I think it worked perfectly for everyone. We certainly weren't trying to do that and it was quite a lucky escape, the way that it worked out, but we won't be planning anything like that this year, that's for sure."—Colin McRae, on his 2006 crash, a few days before an even better crash in this year's final

•"There's no sport except drag racing where you go flat out as fast as you can. Only drag racing. These motorcycle jumpers, they don't go flat out everywhere. There's skill involved in knowing when to go fast, and went not to."—John Buffum

• "I think I got a little too comfortable after Comrie-Picard got into trouble. I backed off bit and came on the inside of the corner too tight and clipped a concrete barrier. It really damaged the front right wheel and I could not turn. Luckily, I limped in and won the heat. But man, I'm really embarrassed."—Ken Block, after the wheels (literally) came off

• "On a scale of 10, this is at least a 15. Just being here is a special thing, but then taking away the gold ... just unbelievable. I had no friggin' idea. I'm gonna party like a rockstar tonight."—Tanner Foust, gold medal driver