Welcome to WRC Spain, one of the quickest rallies of the season—its smooth-surfaced roads and sweeping corners make it very much like the F1 on city streets. The rally, based south of Barcelona in Salou features 18 stages with over 200 kilometers of competitive sealed-surface racing. Sebastien Loeb has won here in previous years and once again dominated this time around. His margin was almost 30 seconds over his teammate, who was trailing him in second place. More…

Continue reading "WRC: Back To The Asphalt!" »

What a weekend! With over 300 km of competitve stages, the New Zealand rally offered enough gravel to pick out of your teeth for days to come. The weather held off and the light gravel stages made for some pretty impressive driving and some very interesting tactics. On the first day, Jarri-Matti Latvala slowed before the last stage of the day to force two cars ahead of him to clear a lot of the loose gravel. And again, on the second day, rally leader Sebastien Loeb played the same card to stick Jarri-Matti and Mikko Hirvonen with the onerous duty of "road sweepers." This first car or cars help to push the loose gravel out of the way for the trailing cars, leaving them with a much clearer line, better traction, and a pronounced advantage. More…

Continue reading "WRC Update: Rally New Zealand Review" »

This was the weekend that Jarri-Matti Latvala would love to forget. With a pace note on the opening day that sent him and his co-driver into a violent crash, his car and his confidence never recovered. He was able to finish the stage, but the car wasn’t the same afterwards. He also had another off that sent him into a field on the 2nd day, but he only lost a few seconds. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t enough and he didn’t finish in any top point-scoring positions.

No, this rally belonged to the Citroen C4 Team of Sebastien Loeb and Danni Sordo, who scored a 1-2 finish, making it was the 7th time Loeb has won here since the race’s inception. It was a big win for him and he did it in style, finishing a full 47 seconds ahead of his teammate.  More…

Continue reading "2008 Rallye Deutschland Review" »

The Race of Champions was originally conceived as a head-to-head race for the top WRC Rally stars. But it’s opened up over the years to drivers from other branches of motorsport, and they’ve given the rally boys more than just a run for their money. Contestants have included MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi, seven-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, four-time NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon, seven-time F1 world champion Michael Schumacher, Renault F1′s Heikki Kovalainen, and Audi’s Swedish DTM Champion Mattias Ekstrom. This year, the event is being held at Wembley Stadium on an indoor track so that all the action can be had by all fans. Normally at a rally event, the fans catch only a brief glimpse of each car as it screams past. With the setup at Wembley, visibility is way better and there’s unlikely to be many dull moments. Sold out every year, ROC is an event that I’d love to attend some day.

The big news this year is that seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher will be racing against four-time WRC Champion Sebastien Loeb. Sebastien won it in 2005 and has always placed in the top three over the years. It will be interesting to see how Schumacher handles the race, as it’s a completely different style of driving than what he’s used to.

Hopefully some TV coverage of the event will trickle down to US networks. Let us know if you find anything!

Rally Finland, set to begin on August 31, has been an icon of the WRC since 1973. With its long, sweeping curves, jumps, and gravel, it’s known as the "gravel Grand Prix" and is a favorite of drivers and fans alike—well over half a million spectators tune into the event each year. WRC superstar Sebastien Loeb is out for first Finland win this weekend—in his six years of competing on this course, he’s always been outdone by the likes of Mikko Hirvonen and Marcus Gronholm. With Gronholm now retired, Loeb is hoping to take the victory at last. However, "Flying Finns" Mikko Hirvonen, Jari-Matti Latvala, Petter and Hennig Solberg will be hard to beat on their home Rally so watch for the dust to fly this weekend as we rejoin the WRC season following its two-month hiatus.

Another one to watch is newcomer manufacturer Suzuki. After just entering the WRC this season, their second iteration of the SX4 WRC comes to the Rally Finland this weekend. Most manufacturers wait 2 to 4 years before releasing a revised version of their WRC car, but for Suzuki the learning curve has been steep—they are committed to fast-tracking the car up into the higher points scoring positions. Stay tuned to see how it turns out!

This weekend’s WRC Rally Turkey was one of the hottest, driest rallies on record. With temperatures soaring well into the 40 degrees Celsius, cars, crews and drivers were feeling the heat. With 19 stages and 360 Kms of competitive stages, Turkey is one of the longest and most grueling rallies of the season.

The first day saw privateer Urmo Aava take the lead in the morning and show the rest of the "works" teams how it’s done. Works teams are teams that are sponsored by big manufacturers, such as Ford, Citroen, and Subaru. Privateers are drivers and co-drivers that seek out sponsorship and funding on their own to put themselves through the season. However, it was Sebastien Loeb who finished on top at the end of the first day thanks to some tricky tactics by the Ford duo Mikko Hirvonen and Jari-Matti Latvala.

The Fords were ahead at the end of the last stage of the day, but held back just before the finish line to put Sebastien first on the road on Day 2—a risky tactic that paid dividends by the rally’s end. Thus forced to play trailblazer on Day 2, Loeb would have his work cut out for him as he battled these thick gravel stages. As the first car out, he was the one clearing the road for the rest of the pursuing pack. More…

Continue reading "WRC Update: Ford Sneaks Up For The Win in Rally of Turkey!" »

The Acropolis Rally is one of the toughest in the series, a car breaker and tire killer, and this year was no exception. With 330 competitive kilometers based around the city of Athens, it’s one of the hottest and fiercest rallies of the season. The Pirelli Scorpion tire fared okay, but certainly took a beating, and drivers had to conserve their tires between stages to make it through until the next service. Some had to press on with no tread at all, or even drive on the rim. Read on…

Continue reading "WRC Update: Acropolis Rally, Greece" »

Beginning today is the Rally Jordan, the 5th event in the 2008 WRC tour. Based around the Dead Sea near the capital city of Amman, it’s the only event on the calendar featuring stages that are up to 1300 feet below sea level. It’ll feature 160 miles of competitive stages for the crews to endure.

Pirelli, the sole tire supplier to the WRC this season, claims that their new "Scorpion" tire is up to the challenge of the unforgiving gravel course. The teams will have to take their word for it, since anti-deflation mousse is no longer allowed in the tires. The mousse is a pliable material that’s placed inside the tire around the rim which compresses upon inflation, and then rapidly expands again in the event of a puncture, automatically sealing the tire so that the car can continue driving. I’m still scratching my head as to why the FIA decided against this for 2008.

The crews may well experience ambient temperatures of over 105 degrees over the weekend. Staying hydrated and cool is hard in a rally car as air conditioning isn’t an option—roof scoops are the only form of A/C they’ll be running while they’re out on the stages.

Stay tuned—I’ll provide additional coverage as the event unfolds in the coming days!

The WRC event in Argentina at the end of March was quite a spectacular one! First, some facts about Rally Argentina: it’s known for its unpredictable terrain, water splashes, and dramatic elevation differences. Hosted in the city of Cordoba, it boasts 216 miles of competitive stages. This year, it was hosted 6 weeks earlier than usual, so instead of dust and dirt, the drivers had mud and fog to deal with. The FIA regs that determine which control tire gets used in each event came under heavy fire by all of the drivers. The FIA stipulated this season that everybody is to use the same tire and is not allowed to modify it for any reason. In previous years, the teams were permitted to make "cuts" or extra grooves in the tires to help disperse mud and water, but the practice has since been banned, making it tricky for competitors to get optimal traction with the standard-issue tires. Sebastien Loeb said, "I would like to find the FIA official and have him go for a ride with me to explain how treacherous and dangerous the no-cut rule is on rallies like this."

Day-by-day recap of the 3-day event below the jump…

Continue reading "WRC Argentina Recap" »

Derek Ringer will now co-drive for Travis Pastrana for Pastrana’s challenge in the FIA P-WRC Series. The series one level below the World Rally Championship (WRC), P-WRC is where drivers can enter production cars modified to FIA rally specifications. Derek Ringer co-drove with Colin McRae from the Early 80s to 2000 when bad blood between the two resulted in Ringer being replaced by Nicky Grist. The first event for the new Ringer/Pastrana team was this past weekend’s Rally Argentina, certainly the most vicious on record, where dense fog and muddy conditions led them to roll their car on stage one. So they may not be off to the most stellar start, but with Ringer’s history, Travis Pastrana stands to learn a lot and to better his rally experience.