We were a bit behind the 8 Ball this year on our X Games coverage due to extremely difficult media conditions but we were still able to bring you a few nice shots of the action that took place on the streets of LA over the weekend. In case you live in a cave on another planet, you probaby already know that WRC-hero Sebastien Loeb won X Games gold with the Gymkhana Master Ken Block grabbing silver and last year’s winner Brian Deegan grabbing bronze. Shooting conditions aside, it was a great show and I think it helped expose even more people to Rally racing. Here is hoping that things get even better next year. Now hit up our Facebook page to see our gallery of shots!
One of the biggest stories of X Games 18 Rally X so far is the horrible crash that happend to Toomas Heikkinen on Friday. The young driver went too slow on the ramp, thus shorting the 50ft gap jump and running head-on into the other side. The incident caused a big stir and the rumor around the Rally paddock was that all the drivers who came over from Europe banded together and told X Games rally officials that they would refuse to drive unless jump was changed from a gap to a table top style jump. Wether the rumor is true or not the jump was in fact changed yesterday. I decided to haunt the paddock and talk to as many drivers as I could to see what they really thought of the jump modification. The result was a mix-bag of opinions, all of which you can see below.
It should be noted that after the change to the jump was completed practice went underway late Saturday and during the session Marcus Gronholm suffered a crash into a barrier just after successfully completing the jump. Marcus hit the barrier so hard that he was knocked unconcious. However reports are that he is now awake and under observation in a local hospital.
We finally have our X Games 17 Rally coverage up and running! Yay for us! Ok so in case you are in the rare position of not being at X Games 17 or not catching it on TV or any of the TV repeats then you are in luck because we will give you the break down. Things kicked off on Saturday with Super Rally racing. Super Rally is the timed head-to-head event with two cars racing each other at a time and each car needing to take one “Joker Lap” per heat. Many were expecting the big budget Ford Fiestas to dominate on that day but it was actually Monster Energy Driver Liam Doran in his flat black Citroen. Before the weekend most of us have never heard of Liam but he is actually Tanner Foust’s main rival in the European Rally Cross series over seas so it was no surprise that he had no fear of the golden child on American Soil.
The next day was the main event that we were all waiting for: Rally Cross. Rally Cross is the 4 car at a time mayhem that we saw last year for the first time in the LA Colosseum. This year things were changed up a bit as in the final heat there were 8 cars total in the final heat instead of 4. Each winner of the round 1 heats were lined up in the front row while the top four from the “Last Chance Qualifier” (AKA “LCQ”) lined up in the back row, then all of them were let loose on the streets of Los Angeles. Tanner Foust, Marcus Gronholm, Brian Deegan, Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, and Liam Doran were all among the final 8 to do battle. Note that Travis Pastrana is on that list. Despite breaking his throttle foot the Friday before during the Moto X best trick Pastrana made his way into the race with the help of his team engineering a set of hand controls ala Alex Zanardi. Although despite his best effort Travis was not able to come out on top. So, who won the epic battle? It was none other than Brian Deegan, general of the “Metal Mulisha” that ran away from the pack and took his first Rally X Games gold. You can check out highlights from both events below and check out some of our official galleries via the links below as well.
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