What It Feels Like to Rally with Travis Pastrana
“Oh shoot, left side—that’s right, wrong country,” Travis Pastrana laughs as he adjusts the wheel of his Subaru WRX to avoid an oncoming vintage Land Rover. We’re winding through the paddock area toward the starting line of Goodwood Festival of Speed’s 1.9-mile forest rally stage.
Pastrana is eager for his third sprint through the stage; I’m happy to be strapped in the passenger seat for the run. Neither of us appreciates the heat, though. It’s 90 degrees outside, which translates to triple-digit temps inside the car, the real-feel far higher in mandated fire suits.
“It’ll get better when we get moving,” he says as we join the starting line queue amid a gaggle of other rally cars. Gesturing to them, I ask if there’s anything else here he’d like a go in. “Any of the 555 [Colin] McRae cars. The old Audi Quattros. The WRC cars,” he replies without hesitation. “I’m more of a driver than an enthusiast. Whatever the best vehicle is, that’s what I want. I want to go as fast as I can.”
He’s in luck, since we’re sitting in his new WRX ARA25 rally car, built by Subaru’s U.S. motorsports arm for competing in the American Rally Association. The ARA25 starts with a stock chassis and throws everything else out the window. The 2.0-liter four-cylinder has been turbocharged to the hilt, running 22 psi of boost to produce 320 ponies and 380 lb-ft of twist.
That power runs through a six-speed sequential gearbox, controlled via a large handle protruding between us, just beside the equally tall handbrake. Much of the car is carbon-fiber, a bid to shed weight. From the outside, the 15-inch wheels look almost comically small, however more sidewall means better absorption when you’re hurtling over forest debris at triple-digit speeds.
The antilag launch system fires up with a mechanical growl that suggests violence. A small LED display near the starting line counts us down to zero, and we’re away.
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Image Credit: Matthew Stryker Pastrana saws at the wheel as we rocket through third gear, gingerly modulating the throttle as hay bales narrow around us like the world’s most dangerous funnel. “It gets super slick as we get out into the woods here,” he explains with the casual tone of someone discussing the weather. Within seconds, the bales are replaced by towering trees that blur past my peripheral vision.
The turbo whines in my ears like an enormous, angry mosquito. Fourth gear. Then down to second as he flicks us into a tight 90-degree left-hander, the car sliding gracefully around the turn in a controlled drift.
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Image Credit: Matthew Stryker “The surface sucks,” he quips, feathering the throttle. “You can feel it, right? There’s nothing underneath us.” He’s not wrong—the Subaru’s tires scramble for purchase on the slick hard-packed chalk surface, his hands constantly busy with corrective inputs, keeping us rocketing forward despite the car’s protests.
“A few years ago, my first lap around here,” he says as we rip through a long right corner, “I slid and caught the inside of a bump and rolled it, and they’ll never let me live it down.” We approach that very corner, and he bumps the sequential shifter down from fourth to first. “This is the corner. I grabbed the handbrake and caught that inside lip,” he says as I feel our car sliding toward the outside before catching slightly. “Ah, just like that, but on the other side.”
“It’s just so icy, though, which is hard to believe because with the amount of driving that gets done on this, you’d think the rocks would eventually—”
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Image Credit: Matthew Stryker His tactical analysis is interrupted because we’ve reached the donut area. Since Pastrana isn’t officially competing for time, he treats the gathered fans to a perfect donut, waves, and instructs me to lay on the horn—accomplished by pressing a button on the floor with my right foot.
The only time fifth gear appears on Pastrana’s dash is as we approach a jump near the stage’s end, where our wheels leave the ground 30 or 40 feet of flight. We’re carrying tremendous speed into the final corners, and though it probably kills him to lift, Pastrana does, downshifting to third while still moving at an eye-blurring clip.
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Image Credit: Matthew Stryker There’s a fast left-right exchange ahead. We’re coming in so hot that by the time Pastrana corrects the steering from left to right, we’re bouncing off the berm. This draws a wild, hyena-style cackle from me.
“That was a little hard, actually,” Pastrana chuckles.
A little smooch, no?
“A little smooch is okay,” he replies. “That was more of a bump, and bumps are bad.” (The car was ultimately fine.)
As we creep back toward the paddock, Pastrana has a few parting thoughts: “You could use a tractionized ice tire out there and find a lot more grip. This doesn’t really give you an idea of what fast is because it’s so slippery.”
Untrue, Travis. That was blistering.
Authors
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Sean Evans
