Withdrawal of factory ProRally teams brings change – and opportunity

By David Gee

The off-season always means lots of changes for any form of motorsport, or any other professional sport for that matter.

But with the decision by Subaru of America and the Air Force Reserve to withdraw their team efforts from the 2004 SCCA ProRally Championship competition, the starting grid for Round One - this Friday’s Sno*Drift Rally in Michigan - will be missing something.

“I look at it two ways, says Murray Thomas of TAD Motorsports, who is preparing a brand-new Mitsubishi Evolution for potential front-runner Seamus Burkes. “As a rally fan I’m disappointed I won’t be seeing World Championship-caliber cars at our events. But then again, when the factory cars do run, the privateers don’t really stand a chance of winning so this will mix things up a bit.”

Speaking of winning, Subaru’s former number two-driver Ramana Lagemann has designs on leading the way to a championship this season, albeit in Group N.

Driving a 2002 Subaru WRX prepped by Lance Smith of Vermont Sports Cars, assisted by the equipment and technicians from last year’s championship-sweeping factory Mitsubishi team, he thinks this is his time to prove he can win, and will be looking to stand out on every stage.

Looking to stand on it during every stage will be a Vermont Sports Car stablemate with an extreme name, or rather a name he made for himself in extreme sports.

Freestyle, motocross and X-Games two-wheel superstar Travis Pastrana will slip behind the wheel of a silver Production GT 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX to apply the laws of physics to four-wheel fun.

“I think rally and motocross share lots of skills,” explains the dynamic 20-year-old, who went to driving school with Tim O’Neill and last year’s overall driver’s champion David Higgins. “It’s all about weight transfer, anticipating how much traction is available for cornering versus accelerating and so on.”

And so on he will get to Sno*Drift with last year’s second place co-driver Christian Edstrom in the second seat.

“I anticipate Travis will come up to speed very quickly and have the potential to do well,” opines Edstrom. “We’ll start off nice and steady on Friday and then turn up the wick a little on Saturday. The goal is clearly to finish and get as many stages miles as possible under our belts.”

Chris Yandell, who heads the marketing efforts for Vermont Sports Car, thinks an X-Games guy could be just what rallying needs.

“The sport has always been about the cars, but it really has been missing a personality. Look at NASCAR as an example, the focus is more on the drivers, and not really their rides. Travis has a chance to attract the same extreme sports audience to rallying, and bring millions of new eyeballs to at least sample the sport. New fans, new competitors; that’s what you need for growth.”

Yandell is hopeful that might eventually attract both non-automotive sponsors, as well as bring back the factory teams, but native New Zealander Murray Thomas isn’t so sure.

“Certainly this is a cyclical sport, like a lot of others, and we are going to have some ups and downs, but I’m just not convinced mainstream America is ever going to be interested in rallying.”

Thomas, who teamed with countryman Rod Millen to win a championship back in 1982, explained to me that geography, the sheer size of the United States, also makes it difficult to run an entire series without an entire bank at your disposal.

“Back home, we could compete in six different rally events within an hour-and-a-half’s drive. You could drive your rally car to and from the event, or if you broke down, have some bloke loan you a trailer to limp home, but the point is it didn’t take so much money to compete. Here we drive all over the country with trailers and transporters and have to take time off work and it’s just so much more expensive. It’s a tough, tough sport.”

But don’t be mistaken into thinking those are quittin’ words.

“I don’t want to do anything else. Rallying is the ultimate motorsport. It’s man versus machine, going head-to-head against a competitor you can’t even see! I love it.”

Competitors running a Subaru have to love an increased factory-supported contingency program, even if the factory teams themselves won’t be in the field for 2004.

Tim Bennett, the director of marketing programs for Subaru of America says, “Subaru will remain the largest official contingency sponsor of the 2004 ProRally Championship and contribute to the SCCA Partnership Bonus Program, exhibiting our commitment to facilitating the growth of rally in the U.S.”

Total potential payouts through the Subaru Championship Cup could exceed $100,000, and Subaru will also provide a parts support truck at most events.

Doug Havir, team owner/driver of the #88 CPD Racing 2002 Subaru Prodrive WRX-STi Open Class car, isn’t looking for any self-fulfilling prophecies, but feels having access to the Subaru Rally Parts Support Truck at Sno*Drift might be necessary.

“It can be a destructive event,” says Havir, who owns and runs National Bankcard Services (www.nbs-inc.com) when he’s not running his rally car. “On the plus side however, is the fact that it is a driver’s event that depends more on smoothness and skill than brute horsepower.”

Sno*Drift has been a brute of a rally for the Carpe Per Diem race team in the past. In fact they have yet to finish after hitting a patch of ice concealed under two inches of snow and stumping out in the 2002 event, and then DNF’ing due to a bad clutch in 2003.

Still, there is hope for this year’s event in the woodlands of central Michigan, even with snow and low temperatures forecast for Friday and Saturday.

“Winter rallies usually bring with them a fairly high ‘pucker factor,’” says Scott Putnam, the co-driver of the #88 CPD Racing Subaru. “With varying levels of traction and the sudden appearance of ice in your path, this can mean for some very religious moments in the car. Trees will seemingly suck you towards them, and as you pray intently for the tires to hook up, most of the time you motor on…although stationary obstacles can often whiz by the car at an uncomfortably close distance.”

With nearly 60 entrants, including three 2003 champions, expect lots of close competition as Round One of the 2004 SCCA ProRally Championship is contested at the site of the first stage rally in America, back in 1973.

With all the changes in the sport, however, you can be sure the competitors won’t spend much time looking back, but rather are firmly focused on the interesting event – and year – ahead.

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