Driving Sports

Not Done Yet! - Canadians Prep for Rally of the Tall Pines

Unpredictable weather and challenging roads set the stage for a fierce final showdown at Canada’s rally season ender, the Rally of the Tall Pines, November 20-22, in Bancroft, Ontario.

Subaru Rally Team Canada’s Pat Richard and co-driver Alan Ockwell have already secured the Canadian championship title, but defending champions Antoine L'Estage and Nathalie Richard are looking for redemption in what has been a frustrating Canadian season.

L'Estage Wins Pacific Forest Rally - Richard Takes Canadian Championship

Hyundai’s Antoine L’Estage and co-driver Nathalie Richard earned their second win of the season at the Pacific Forest Rally, while Subaru Rally Team Canada has secured the championship title.

“We’re very happy to have won, and this puts us in a good spot for the North American Rally Cup,” said L’Estage. “We had some problems at this event, but thanks to our crew and sponsors, we were able to win again here.”

L’Estage and Richard, the defending champions, have suffered from reliability problems this year in their Hyundai Tiburon, preventing this normally dominant team from enjoying the success they have had in the past.

Photo by Andrew Harvey Photography

2009 Subaru WRX: Revised, Redeemed.

When Subaru introduced the new-generation 2008 WRX it was met with disdain from a large segment of its enthusiast community. The WRX was always a rally car bred for the road, but now Subaru was using the name on a bread-and-butter hatchback. This was something very different than the car enthusiasts knew and loved: the 2008 model was, dare I say, "sensible."

Sensible has its place, but usually that's on the boot lid of a Toyota. Not a rally car bred for the street. And yes, Subaru did provide enthusiasts with the STI, but with a price starting in the low 30's, it was an expensive pill to swallow for the less-than-well-heeled masses. Then, something amazing happened. Where most manufacturers would stick to their guns and point to charts that tell customers what cars they really want, Subaru did the unexpected: it listened and went back to the drawing board for a complete refresh, only one year after the original was released.

Dreadnought gets More Steam and More Beam

It has been a while since I updated my project Dreadnought, and there is a good reason for that: It didn’t run so well. It started when the little 1.8-liter began to lose power. Then there was the constant smell of coolant followed by an over-flowing, over-flow bottle. The head gaskets were certainly shot. Instead of replacing the gaskets and doing a big, expensive service to the little mill, I came to the conclusion that upward and onward was the way to go. So I decided to build a 2.5-liter turbo block.

Trey Cobb Interview

While attending GT Live West at Miller Motorsport Park we stopped by Cobb Tuning in nearby Salt Lake City, Utah. There we chatted with Cobb's founder and namesake, Trey Cobb. In this exclusive video he chats about where the company is going, and the state of auto tuning. A good viewing for any fan of car tuning. To spice things up a bit, we also included video of Cobb's 2009 Nissan GT-R and Mazdaspeed3 project cars as they were competing at GT Live that same weekend.

Hit the jump to watch the clip, or click on the Feature channel to view it at 640x360.

Driving Sports Time Attack Draws Hot Machinery

The first ever Driving Sports Time Attack got underway today at Portland International Raceway as part of the Mazda Grand Prix of Portland.

22 cars are entered, ranging from a 1971 Datson 510 with a full Toyota Supra drivetrain to a selection of pumped Subarus, a nice assortment of RX-7s and winding out with a right hand drive JDM-spec Nissan R35 GT-R.

On Friday, competitors had an open 45-minute practice session to get the feel of the new surface and corners at PIR, and they made good use of their time.

One select photo appears at right, but a full gallery of pictures is available here.

The action continues tomorrow evening with 4 rounds of Time Attack competition - timed to 1/1000th of a second. May the hottest shoe win!

Results: http://blog.drivingsports.com/blog/timeattack.html

Crawford STI Qualifies Drivers for Lap Battle Finale

This past weekend Crawford Performance and their 2008 WRX STI, piloted by drivers Tanner Foust and Russ Warr, earned a spot in the Super Lap Battle Finale ( November 11th).  Despite excessively high ambient temperatures and the even hotter Mojave Desert winds, the Skunkworks team was also able to pull off two 1st place wins at the Willow Springs Raceway event.

Super Lap (alternatively known as Tuner Battles or Time Attack) originated in Japan as a proving ground for street tuned cars built at a large budget by highly respected tuning companies. As a result of the quick rise in popularity, tuners developed cars specifically to beat the competition. Drivers are allocated three laps in a final event run: warm-up, timed and cool-down. Ultimately, the competitor setting the quickest timed lap is crowned Champion.

Tough Times at the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally

For a replay of Driving Sports' Live coverage of STPR 2008, click here. Live coverage sponsored by Perrin Performance.

If the Rally America teams thought their trials and tribulations were safely left behind in Oregon, they received a rude awakening at this week’s Waste Management Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally.  “Waste management” was an appropriate name for the event, as the destruction tour that is the 2008 Rally America season continued at full throttle.

Starting from the top of the seed list, Subaru Rally Team USA arrived with two new 2008 STI hatchbacks. The new rally machines showed up straight from the shop, apparently without much testing time to shake the bugs out. This may prove to be the team’s undoing for the year, because before the paint was even dry the rear suspensions on both cars failed in spectacular fashion.

The early season juggernaut of Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino sputtered to a halt in Oregon with a DNF, and faltered again on stage 2 in Pennsylvania. According to rally control reports, the rear lower control arms failed and left the former points leaders stranded by the side of the road. This ended their national hopes for the weekend, but the veteran rallyists came back to contest the regional event the next day.  Oregon Trail winner Travis Pastrana and co-driver Derek Ringer experienced similar troubles on stage 2, but made it back to service for repairs and were not time-barred.

Rally Championship Live Coverage: June 6-7

The complete real-time rally experience will be online for the Waste Management
Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally - Round 5 of the Rally America U.S. Rally Series. Tell your friends! It will be live and 100% free (thanks to our generous sponsors!)

Plans are set. In partnership with Rally America, Driving Sports will be bringing rally fans the first live video coverage of Round 5 of the Rally America Championship.

This is the link that will feature the action starting on June 5: Click Here.

We'll have a crew of 7 on the ground at STPR to bring you the best coverage possible. Here is the plan:

Live Video Stream
Live, streaming video morning pre-event show at 9am (EST) on Friday. This will feature highlights from shakedown the day before and will have interviews with drivers and co-drivers prior to the first stages.

We will have additional live shows scheduled by that morning, so be sure to visit the site for more info. We'll also have a set location in service, so feel free to stop by for an interview or bring us your in-car and we'll broadcast it. (SD, Cflash, HD, HDV.)

Teams, we'll be operating this from the Comfort Inn hotel (or other location TBD) and will welcome any drivers or co-drivers that want to be interviewed. Viewers will be able to stream this from our site (Attention geeks: we're using Akamai for global, multi-point Quicktime video broadcasting. No user limitations to the streams.)

Live Blog
Continuous blog updates with photos. We'll report stage information and any interesting stories teams want to share with us.

Talk to us!
We'll monitor your live feedback. Have a question for the host or a guest? We'll take them live.

High-res Feature Videos
Feature videos like what we produced for Oregon Trail Rally. These will be much higher resolution than what we can do with the live feed. Stuff worth watching over and over and over again! We'll also post high-res versions of the live shows for repeated viewing.

Spread the word! If there's interest we could do the same level of coverage for all the rallies in the series. Give us your eyeballs, we'll do the rest!

Special Guests:
Travis Pastrana
Dave Mirra
Ken Block
Andrew Comrie-Picard
Andy Pinker
& More!

Round 5 Sponsors:
Perrin Performance
Subiesport Magazine
North American Subaru Impreza Club (NASIOC)

Patrick Richard Takes Rocky Mountain Victory

Two-time Canadian Rally Champion Pat Richard (pronounced Ree-shard) made his return to the top of the podium in a new 2008 Subaru Impreza STI at the Rocky Mountain Rally, Round 2 of the Canadian Rally Championship, presented by Subaru.

Despite teething problems with the freshly prepared car, Richard swept into the lead this weekend after championship rivals Andrew Comrie-Picard and Antoine L’Estage suffered mechanical problems that forced both teams out of the rally.

“We didn’t expect to win, but it’s a great finish,” said Pat Richard. “The team worked really hard to make this happen.”

Photos by Andrew Harvey Photography