Rally America

After leading all weekend to take the win at 100 Acre Wood for the third year in a row, Ken Block continued his dominance on fast, flowing roads last weekend by winning the year's Olympus Rally.

The Olympus Rally is one of the oldest rally events in America, and at one time was a World Rally Championship event. This year the organizers had to move the rally across the state, though, after the traditional roads were made unavailable to them.

These new roads were mostly very fast, well flowing roads, which Ken Block and co-driver Alex Gelsomino have a history of success on.

In this rally, Ken and Alex basically led from start to finish, leaving the very strong field literally in the dust.

This event saw the return of former Rally America champion Pat Richard, who ended up finishing in sixth, just over three minutes behind Block.

Matthew Johnson took his new open class car out to Washington and finished strong in fifth place. After winning the Production GT championship last year, Johnson is proving that he has what it takes to be a contender.

Andrew Comrie-Picard took fourth, fighting back from mechanical problems on stage one to finish two minutes and 20 seconds back from Block.

Tanner Foust put the Rockstar Rally team on the podium for the first time this year by finishing third, one minute, 12 seconds behind. Foust had a couple of stage wins, but overall he just couldn't keep up with Block.

Second was won by defending Rally America champion Travis Pastrana. Derek Ringer was co-driving for Pastrana again, filling in since February when Christian Edstrom decided to take some time off.

Just out of sixth place were Kyle Sarasin and Andrew Pinker, who were both competitive, but just didn't have enough to run up front.

After this event, Ken Block has expanded his points lead to 13 points, over Andrew Comrie-Picard. Though Block is pulling away early in the season, the season is still young enough that many different drivers still have a legitimate chance.

The next rally has a great chance of shaking up the points because it takes place on the very tight, twisty foresting roads of Oregon. Andrew Pinker won this event last year, and it could prove to be the stepping stone he needs to get back into the championship hunt. The event takes place May 16-18 outside of Portland, Oregon.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you, the readers of bleacherreport.com to the sport of performance rally.  Due to the increasing popularity of video games, featuring rally car names such as Colin McRae have become more commonplace.  However, as Paul Harvey likes to say: “Would you like to know the rest of the story?”

Rallying is, quite frankly, the primeval ooze from which all motorsports evolved.  Back in the very late 1800’s, when privileged people owned the very first motorcars, human nature kicked in and they wondered who was best at working their new machines. 

From Paris, owners would venture to a surrounding village, usually to a pub.  The first one there would be declared that week’s winner.  As time went by, these early racers would have tremendous duels on the wooded lanes and some thought it was a shame that people could not view what these new motorcars could do.  Hence enclosed circuits were created and their lies the beginnings of road racing.

Here in the United States, rallying has been popular with enthusiasts since before the Great Race from New York to Paris, in itself a rally of the grandest scale.  In 1973 the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) recognized the popularity of teams wanting to actually close public roads for speed contests not possible in the current road rally format, and thus Pro Rally was born.  More about speed than precision timing, this type of rallying required a purpose built car and special equipment.

A rally team consists of a specially modified vehicle to handle the jarring bumps and jumps that a typical rally stage consists of.  There is a driver and a navigator inside the vehicle, unique in motorsport since the days of the ride-along mechanic in the early days of the Indianapolis 500.  The navigator reads a route book or stage notes—depending on the event, feeding the driver important information, as he drives as fast as possible down an unfamiliar road.  Some events allow limited recce of the stages, giving teams the ability to make their own route instructions, which are more detailed than the books supplied by the organizer. 

A rally team also has a service crew ranging from a few friends to paid professional mechanics who work on the car at predetermined service area locations throughout the rally route.

A rally team tackles various types of driving during an event.  The special stages are where drivers are on the throttle, driving as fast as possible on closed pieces of road controlled by the rally organizers.  These special stages are linked together with transit sections where drivers do the speed limit and obey all traffic laws.  Many events utilize secret control locations on public roads to insure public safety, making sure competitors obey speed limits or making determinations about vehicle worthiness in case of accidents or mechanical failure. 

Today, rallying in the United States is more popular than ever. Thanks to the addition of rally cars to the X Games, American rallying is posed to grow like never before. 

Due to the unique challenge that rally brings to drivers and navigators, it attracts the boldest personalities and the heartiest of souls.  Two time Rally America Champion Travis Pastrana is infamous as a freestyle motorcycle daredevil, with many X Games medals and records to his credit, including the world's first double back flip.  His teammate is extreme clothing company founder Ken Block from DC Shoes.  These two men comprise Subaru Rally Team USA. 

Other equally talented men and women include names like Tanner Foust, Matt Iorio, Chrissy Beavis, Andrew Comrie-Picard, Lauchlin O’Sullivan, Christian Edstrom and hundreds of others pepper entry lists from Maine to Oregon.  Teams run in events ranging from drifting Michigan snow to Oregon rain to the hot and humid August days and nights in Northern Minnesota in August.

I feel that the readers of bleacherreport.com will enjoy the event reports coming for the 2008 Rally America National Championship, as well event reports from regional events.  This season will also see Travis Pastrana and Christian Edstrom do double duty in both the National Championship and in the Production Car World Championship.

For more information please investigate these informational websites.

http://www.rally-america.com

http://www.specialstage.com