Racer: Rallying on a Roll

Blink, and you'll miss it... Colin McRae and Nicky Grist take the spectacular high (and over) road in the stadium finale, handing a close fought victory to Travis Pastrana - but just by over half a second!

In 1999, the organizers of the X Games, looking to add a little razzmatazz to a sports property anchored by human-powered bicycles and skateboards - lest we forget street luge - decided to add the internal combustion engine to the mix. End result: the then-fledgling sport of freestyle motocross was to be included in the Olympics of Alternative Sports.

On June 29, 1999, immediately after winning the first Freestyle Motocross X Games gold medal, 15-year-old Travis Pastrana, in celebration, launched his Suzuki RM into San Francisco Bay.

Instantly, a star was born.

Since 1999, freestyle motocross has consistently flown the flag for the A.C. Nielsen ratings measuring the X Games. So much so that the X Games organizers came to a collective decision this spring that if two wheels was good, four could be great. And so rallying, usually the domain of Europeans and other far-flung types, was put on the bill for Summer X Games 12.

Rallying in America? Not only were there worries about how many people would actually be interested in the event, but how many Yankees even really knew what the sport was about. In fact, so new to the X Games was the four-wheel discipline that the X Games publicity folks had to issue a press release just to describe it.

"Rally Car Racing features a driver and a co-driver racing street-legal cars on closed sections of roads called 'stages.' The goal in rally is to accumulate the lowest elapsed driving time on a prescribed course."

"Every time I walk by his Subaru, I'm like, 'That's Colin McRae's car!'" © No Fear

The Rally X competition at X Games 12 would entail eight natural terrain stages, followed by a finale in and around the Home Depot Center soccer stadium in LA's Carson district. The natural terrain stages were carved out of the rock strewn, baked adobe hills and sand washes of the Hungry Valley ORV Park in Gorman, Calif. And on the bright and sunny morning of Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2006, it all came to be.

"Every time I walk by his Subaru, I'm like, 'That's Colin McRae's car!'" said X Games poster boy Travis Pastrana that morning. Travis was referring to his hero, 1995 World Rally Champion and cardcarrying rally legend Colin McRae.

McRae, from Scotland, had come to Southern California to help "break" his sport to an audience of Echo Boomer Americans (born between 1977 and 1994 and 80 million in number), many of whom knew of him via his wildly popular Codemaster-produced video game, Colin McRae Rally.

"The fact that Colin is here legitimizes this X Games event to the rally industry," added Pastrana. "And yeah, we're doing real well here in the States (in the Rally America Series -Ed.), but how are we against a world-class driver? We really don't know. Colin will give us a good test of where North American rallying is."

In his bright blue and yellow all-wheeldrive Subaru Rally Team USA WRX STI - a car capable of churning out 350- horspepower and speeds of over 130 miles per hour - Travis Pastrana ruled the first two of what would be eight stages in the hills of Gorman.

As morning segued into afternoon, four stages into the rally, Pastrana and co-driver Christian Edstrom still held the lead over McRae and his co-driver, Welshman Nicky Grist. "Travis is driving quite hard and obviously doesn't want to be second," offered Grist.

Said Pastrana of his dazzling early event form, "I can't believe this. We've won or tied three out of the four stages so far and we got second by a second-and-ahalf in the other. In my wildest dreams, I would not have believed this would happen. If we can just stay near the front, we can make a game of it on Saturday."

Winner Travis Pastrana is used to getting air on two wheels, and he proved he's very capable of taking four wheels into orbit, too... © No Fear

Stages five and six were far quicker, with fifth gear flat the transmission cog of choice. The stages also incorporated a couple of big jumps. "The jumps were pretty ridiculous," mused McRae. "They were like supercross jumps. The car would be thrown into the air, drop, then slam into the ground. I suppose Travis may have liked them."

Immediately after stages seven and eight, the final aggregated times were posted. After 400 kilometers of competition, McRae and Grist led by fivetenths of a second. "F*** all in it!" yelled Grist of just how close it actually was.

McRae, who compared the Gorman stages to the Rally of Argentina, walked over to Travis. The pair shook hands and reviewed the day's events. It sure looked like they were having a great time.

"I'm super pumped," exclaimed Pastrana upon seeing the times. "If you were to tell me at the beginning of the day that I'd be a half second off of the lead, I would have slapped you and said you were an idiot."

Now, just one stage remained: The Super Special. The lead McRae and Grist held was so small, it was negligible. And so the Rally Car Race for the X Games gold medal would come down to a one lap, go for broke, free for all on Saturday afternoon inside the 35,000-seat Home Depot Center: The 22-year-old motocross kid going up against one of the greatest rally drivers of all-time. The X Games programming executives couldn't believe their luck.

As a spectacular aside, two days later, and with 13,000 fans and a national TV audience looking on, Pastrana pulled the double back flip on his Suzuki RM250 motocross bike in Staples Center.

"I got a text message from Colin last night," beamed Pastrana the morning after. "I saved it. It said, 'You're my hero.'" In a funny way, it all had come full circle.

But it was now race day and McRae and Pastrana were poised to take to the stadium floor and asphalt parking lots of the Home Depot Center for the final Super Stage that would decide the overall winner of Rally X.

The penultimate entry to take to the Special Stage, Pastrana drove a fine lap, carding a time of 1m56.49s. Next and last up was the Sobe/No Fear Gold Subaru WRX Sti. Now it was all down to the two men inside of it - McRae and Grist. The final car down the 150ft dirt ramp and into the stadium, the fans got on their feet.

After making it around cleanly, McRae only had to reenter the stadium and traverse the final dirt section to win the gold medal. But that's when it all, literally, went upside down, the gold WRX getting a bit too sideways over the jump, catching a tire edge and digging the front nose in on landing.

Pastrana and McRae © No Fear

"I just dug the front in a bit too much on the transition on the jump and it just flipped the car over," smiled McRae upon getting out of the WRX. He then raised his arms as the crowd roared its approval.

Added Grist, a champagne bottle in his hand, "The car rolled right over, fell onto the wheels, and Colin put it straight into first gear and dropped the clutch. At one point I thought, 'Shit! We're going to get away with this!' We popped a tire, though, and the car started laboring. That's where we lost it, really. The roll, and the way we landed, it was much quicker than driving it properly."

When all was said and done and the nine stages aggregated, Pastrana won the gold medal with a time of 12m02.19s. McRae and Grist got the silver with a combined time of 12m02.71s.

"Even though we didn't win, I think what happened at the end here was the best thing that could have happened," beamed McRae. "Travis won and he was a worthy winner. But what happened with the roll and close finish was actually brilliant for the sport. It showed America how exciting and extreme it can be."

Even though he had won, Travis was still in in awe of what McRae had been able to make the WRX do. "I can't get over how Colin landed on four wheels, kept going and still almost beat me."

Later, up in a luxury box inside the Home Depot Center enjoying a drink, McRae and Grist were asked if they would be interested in coming back for Summer X Games in 2007.

"Absolutely!" both replied. They had come, they had not conquered, yet they won the hearts of a lot of kids in America. Kids who may make rally the chosen form of motorsport for the Echo Boomer generation.

SIDEBAR

McRae mixes work with fun while in Southern California

Coming off the bench after an unwelcome hiatus from the World Rally Championship scene, 1995 champ Colin McRae proved his prodigious skills were as acute as ever last November when he nearly took a Skoda Fabia WRC 05, the Cinderella car of the WRC, to a podium - or better - in the Rally of Australia. If it wasn't for a spent clutch in the closing stages, McRae and co-driver Nicky Grist might even have won the thing.

Rally cars © No Fear

With his potency reaffirmed, when it was announced that rallying would be included in Summer X Games 12, SoBe/No Fear went calling on the Scot's services. McRae liked the idea of introducing rally to a new, young fan base in America and a deal was quickly struck.

During his week-long summer vacation in the States, McRae was relaxed, at ease and not at a loss for things to do. After the opening eight stages in Gorman, Calif., McRae took it upon himself to fly No Fear's corporate helicopter back to its base in San Diego. He and Grist also took in a major party thrown by Subaru USA and DC Shoes at the Avalon Club (formerly known as the Palace) in Hollywood.

Known the world over for his successes and adventures in motor racing, McRae is also the name behind Colin McRae Rally, an amazingly successful video game. For those reasons, through his travels in Southern California, McRae generated an amazing amount of interest, which was somewhat surprising considering rally's low profile in the U.S.

"The X Games have never received as much media interest - and requests for media credentials - as they have for the Rally X event. We attribute that to Colin," noted one representative of ABC/ESPN TV.

And as a thrill-seeker himself, McRae found the X Games an enjoyable experience. "The atmosphere here is really something," he said. "I've been able to watch a lot of freestyle motocross as well as other events while here at the X Games and I'm really impressed.

"Travis Pastrana? He really is incredible. In a different league. If he begins to drive rally cars like he rides a motocross bike, we're all screwed."