By AARON COLE
Managing Editor, MediaOne of Utah
LOS ANGELES — Something about Micah Anderson and Blake Wilkey’s faces as they passed by Subaru’s paddock here at the X-Games speaks volumes.
The 20-something motorsport connoisseurs were face-to-grille with Subaru’s $225,000 rally legends last weekend. For the uninitiated, Subaru won the same number of world rally championships during the 1990s as the Dallas Cowboys won Super Bowls in that same period. Yet access to Troy Aikman probably isn’t anywhere near on this level, and the Subaru is probably better to look at now.
“They run on the edge of control,” Anderson said pointing to the acreage of intercoolers underneath X Games-legend Dave Mirra’s car. “It’s unbelievable.”
Anderson and Wilkey traveled more than an hour to the X Games, held at the LA Coliseum without any tickets. No doubt, the pair from southern California likely were able to gain entry at the front door — the Coliseum holds over 100,000 people and generous estimates peg attendance for July 31’s rally events at somewhere near 30,000 — but the access to America’s inconspicuous motorsport was unprecedented.
Rally car racing — you know, Finnish people flying around a forest at six times the speed of sound — is mounting an American invasion this year with the reintroduction of Rally America. The league has actually been around for about 5 years, but organizers are looking to push forward with several big names and exhibition events to finally break through to mainstream race fans.
Extreme-sports luminaries like Travis Pastrana, Dave Mirra and Tanner Foust race in the league full-time or part-time and big name manufacturers like Ford, Subaru and Mitsubishi slug it out in between trees on rally stages scattered throughout the country.
In Europe, rally racing attracts more attention from spectators than a four-alarm fire. In the U.S., rally racing gets less attention than a toothless street preacher.
This is not the first time Europe has tried to force its ideas on us. Remember the Metric system and the Thompson Twins? But one look at the lineup of competitors is pause for contemplation of the sport’s future.
Ken Block, America’s only import into the World Rally Championship this season, might be a name familiar to some. Block is responsible for a slew of smash hit Internet videos featuring his Subaru winding through impossible obstacles on deserted airstrips in California, oh and he created one of the most successful shoe companies in the U.S. Block rocketed his company, DC Shoes, into the skateboarding stratosphere before selling it for a war chest of money to Quiksilver in 2005 to focus on rally racing.
Dave Mirra, has won 37 XGames medals in BMX and other competitions, more than anyone walking the planet and focused this year solely on rally racing. Travis Pastrana, essentially the X Games’ version of Joe Montana, competes in the rally events. Tanner Foust, who will appear this year in the American version of “Top Gear,” the world’s most popular show, competes in rally racing too. The list goes on and on.
And yet here were two Californians, inches away from the sheet metal they worshipped and feet away from athletes they revered in a sport that has yet to gain traction with more fans — pun intended.
Block, a superstar on several levels, stayed to sign autographs well after the competition and signed everything from posters to punk rock T-shirts. Team Subaru, including world-class co-drivers and multi-million dollar pit crews were open for business from 8 a.m. to midnight.
Am I the only person amazed at the access this sport provides?
Sverre Isachsen, Subaru’s 250-lb. ringer brought over from the hinterlands of Norway and European Rallycross, walked virtually unnoticed through the crowds that gathered in the paddocks. To say he’s big in Europe is both figurative and literal.
“I love it,” Isachsen said. “The fans love it when they see it.”
To think that turbocharged racecars barreling through dirt, trees and snow hasn’t overtaken oval track in popularity racing like a broken-down bus is mind boggling on paper. These guys turn their cars left — and right.
Like the other European sport import, soccer, rally racing faces a stiff, uphill, loose sand road to climb. The sport, while wildly fun to watch on TV, lands with a bit of a thud when witnessed in person.
Rally races are just as much about fan participation as they are about driver participation. Often hiking a stage for several hours results in a breathtaking, blink-fast glimpse of drivers as they careen through trees at hundreds of miles a second on a road narrower than Heidi Klum’s waist. Hike again to the next stage and you may be asked to flip an overturned driver after he’s dug a tire in and barrel rolled into your best friend. It’s like watching cycling for fans of insane asylums.
The sport is attempting to caffeinate itself — despite being sponsored by Rockstar, Monster and Red Bull energy drinks — by presenting rallycross to fans, a wheel-to-wheel, head-to-head version of rally racing this year. If that wasn’t enough, rally leagues and manufacturers are bringing European champions stateside to exhibitions in coming months.
Understandably, for those wealthy enough or talented enough to participate, the thrill of rally driving is fiercely addicting.
Just ask the two California dudes drooling next to the Subaru.
Aaron Cole is a syndicated auto columnist and managing editor of MediaOne of Utah, and has driven hundreds of new cars — but only briefly. By most accounts he is wrong and has proudly been banned on Internet message boards. Send complaints, compliments or supplemental income to aaron.m.cole@gmail.com
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