Blogger Kristin
Berkery kindly agreed to provide another first-hand
account of her
experiences at X Games 18 in Los Angeles, California with
her family. Kristin loves rallycross and
supports the sport by regularly keeping other fans and followers in the know on
Google+. She’s a writer and marketing designer in
Sacramento, California, who blogs at www.ilovehorses.net. You can follow her on Twitter @ilovehorsesnet. Thanks a million, Kristin!
A
Day at the (Rallycross) Races
by
Kristin Berkery
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| Some activities for kids at X Fest, Los Angeles |
Before I attended X Games 18 an online friend emailed me some suggestions, ending with his description of the event: "It's like a county fair on steroids." Now that I've been there, I understand.
The free part of the
spectacle, X Fest, is a 1/4-mile stretch of road in downtown L.A. closed to
vehicles. There are skateboarding demos, vendor booths offering games and tons
of tchotchkes (or what my Comic-Con friends call swag), DJ’s blasting
music, athlete autograph sessions, and a couple of free amusement activities
for the younger kids. My six-year-old and three-year-old especially loved the
booth that gave out free Otter Pops. The
only thing missing was deep-fried Snickers bars on a stick.
As we explored X Fest on
Saturday evening we heard some loud engines revving on the other side of the Staples Center. The rallycross course had
been set up on the city streets around the Staples Center, L.A. Convention
Center, and a nearby strip mall. We made our way back to that area and
discovered some of the drivers taking practice runs. Frenchman Sébastien Loeb’s
Citroën was impressive for its speed and unbelievable noise. As it made its way
around the course, it constantly made piercing backfire noises as a result of
its turbo anti-lag system. We also watched Travis Pastrana and Ken Block
do their practice laps.
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| Travis Pastrana poses for photos with fans. |
That evening we noticed that
the metal jump was different from the
day before. We now saw a tabletop
jump instead of the gap jump that caused Toomas Heikkinen to crash
spectacularly on Friday afternoon. I was relieved. Just a few weeks prior,
these same drivers had faced a metal gap jump that had caused nothing less than
mayhem.
At Hoon Kaboom in Fort Worth, Texas, in
June, the rallycross cars were required to take the metal gap jump on every lap,
leaving most of them broken by the end of the race. The cars were engineered
for dirt jumps, not metal, so the new jump in the Global Rallycross Championship
series was a challenge for the drivers and cars. I thought the drivers would be
spared the metal jump at X Games 18 since last year’s jump was dirt, but I
learned otherwise during a Ford
Racing text chat with Tanner Foust on Friday.
I wasn’t thrilled because I
wanted the races to be a fair representation of the drivers’ skills, not a chaotic
mess where the drivers with the most luck ended up on the podium. There are
other drawbacks to the metal ramp: It can cause a lot of damage to the cars
that requires expensive repairs. Sponsors can be turned off by the escalating
costs and racing teams with less funding could find it impossible to continue
racing. In either case, GRC’s efforts to grow rallycross racing in the U.S.
could be affected.
After returning to our hotel
on Saturday evening we learned that Marcus
Grönholm crashed that afternoon right after taking the tabletop jump. It
was shocking news because we knew Grönholm was a top contender for gold and I
wanted to see him go head to head with another European known for surgical
precision behind the wheel -- Sébastien Loeb.
Grönholm suffered a head injury and was out of the races.
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| Skate demo at the Ford Booth |
For the first heat I moved to
an area facing the straightaway after the second turn and felt the adrenaline
as Sam Hübinette’s orange
SAAB came flying straight at the crowd and made a sudden turn at the last
moment. My family and I moved to the infield area for the rest of the races and
found a view that worked best for us.
We positioned ourselves right
in the middle of the first and second turns so we could watch the drivers make
an upside down U around us. It proved to be an excellent spot because it was
shaded by trees and it gave the kids room to run in circles (and make us a
little crazy) for the 40 minutes between races. It was also the same area where
Travis Pastrana was pushed into
the wall by Andy Scott in the fourth heat.
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| Ken Block aka the Chief Hoonigan's pit area |
I’d heard some of the drivers
weren’t happy about the metal gap jump, so I asked the mechanic what he thought
of the issue. He said the drivers could have it changed if enough of them
demanded it. Not every driver agreed with the altered jump however. The
mechanic also suggested that Grönholm’s crash could have been the result of a
stuck throttle, or the metal jump could have been slippery from rocks and dirt.
News reports have blamed it on a protruding concrete light pole base.
One of the objections over the tabletop jump was that it removed the joker lap
from the race, taking away an important opportunity for drivers to get around
traffic during races. It also required the cars to go over the metal jump on
every lap, which causes more damage to the vehicles.
The second heat gave us a
taste of what to expect in the final. Loeb pushed his way to the front and
Foust made an effort to keep up with him, but Loeb systematically created space
between the two cars on every straightaway.
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| Photo used with permission from www.erc24.com |
The mechanic near us said the
30-second wait was far too long and put an extra burden on the engines. In
Europe, the race begins only five seconds after launch control is begun.
With the next start all 10 cars pushed and shoved their way into the first turn where Pastrana’s pileup had occurred earlier. Loeb came out of the turn first with Foust close behind and Hübinette in third. As in the second heat, Loeb used every straightaway as an opportunity to pull away from the competition. Foust and Hübinette remained in hot pursuit until the race was red-flagged when Isachsen lost his steering after taking the jump and crashed.
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| Photo used with permission from www.erc24.com |
Ugh,
back to the starting line. The cars were lined up a third time and fortunately
it was a clean start. This time Block muscled his way to second behind Loeb,
who jumped to the front once again. Foust moved into third but began to trail
behind Block. When he hit the third turn of the first lap, Foust began to lose
his steering and had to fight his car around every turn, gradually losing
ground to the other drivers. In lap three Binks crashed and Deegan snaked his
way around Millen’s and Binks’ stopped cars to move from sixth into fourth
place. Somewhere in the fourth lap Block ended up with a flat rear tire but
remarkably continued to hold his second place position. If the gap jump hadn’t
been replaced by a tabletop, he might not have been able to continue the race
at all.
Loeb
walked away from the rest of the field and the ESPN replay of the race made it
look like his was the only car left on earth in the last lap. Block held on to
second and Deegan took third as Foust continued to drop back with steering
problems.
There was a lot of excitement in the pits about Loeb, the new gold medal
winner, who was an unknown to most Americans but has won eight consecutive
World Rallycross Championship titles in Europe. He’s expected to return next
year to defend his win and hopefully to compete against Grönholm, who’s raced
against Loeb in Japan and Europe many times before.
After
close to six hours of watching and waiting for races, our tired crew made its
way to the Ford Racing booth in the pits to say hi to Tanner Foust and David
Binks and get their autographs on posters. While Foust and our other favorites
on the Subaru team didn’t medal that day, it was still exciting to see, hear,
feel, and smell the races close-up. I have a feeling Sébastien Loeb will be a
tough competitor in U.S. rallycross in the future, so it was noteworthy to see
his American debut in person.
The
next Global Rallycross Championship
event is in New Hampshire July 13-14. I’ll
be watching it on ESPN and hoping the safety
issues at Texas and X Games are finally resolved.
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