"You know you're in a bad spot when Lloyd's of London won't insure you," says motorsports superstar Travis Pastrana. Lloyd's, a British insurance market known for its unusual and high-risk policies, is rumored to insure F1 champion Michael Schumacher and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. But Travis Pastrana, the man who double backflipped a Suzuki motorcycle at last year's X Games, is apparently too high a risk.
It's an assessment that's hard to argue with.
Two days after that historic motorcycle trick, Travis Pastrana jumped a Subaru WRX and beat former World Rally Champion Colin McRae at his own game. In a dramatic, too-weird-to-be-true twist, McRae rolled his WRX on the last jump before the finish, giving up just enough time to earn Pastrana the win and prove that he is, in fact, a force to be reckoned with on four wheels.
It was this twist of X Games fate that gave the previously rally-numb U.S. audience a sense for the spectacle of the sport. And it opened many eyes to the talent of a driver better known for defying physics with a motorcycle.
We arranged a few days with Pastrana and the Subaru Rally Team USA before this year's Olympus Rally outside of Shelton, Washington, in May. Our only real interview time, however, was squeezed in as Pastrana changed clothes in the backseat of a rented SUV between the rally's press stage and an impromptu pace-note practice session.
Ironically, it's little-known back roads like these through the Cascade Range that will define Pastrana's future on rallying's world stage. Pastrana, who's more accustomed to competing in front of thousands of screaming fans, barely sleeping and spending plenty of time in doctors' offices and emergency rooms, is still in his element. And it's immediately evident that he's as passionate about rallying as he's ever been about competing on two wheels.
Young and Fast
Last year, with Subaru's help, Pastrana became the youngest driver to ever win the U.S. Rally Championship, and listening to him talk about the sport is how we imagine Valentino Rossi might talk about racing motorcycles or how Michael Schumacher might prattle on about F1. There's a clear love for the sport, mixed with more maturity and realism than we'd expect from a 23-year-old best known for performing death-defying tricks on a motorcycle.
Rallying in the U.S. isn't like F1 or Moto GP in Europe. As the redheaded stepchild of American motorsport, its popularity continues to wane despite semi-regular manufacturer support. But Subaru's brand image is based on rallying. The carmaker is serious and so is Pastrana. Serious enough, in fact, that the ultimate goal isn't winning in North America at all. Pastrana's sights are set on the World Rally Championship (WRC), and with Subaru's support it seems possible. This year the team will run three rounds of the Production car World Rally Championship (P-WRC) and next year it plans to run the entire series (eight races) in addition to the nine-round Rally America Championship series where it currently competes.
Two rounds of the 2007 P-WRC are already in the books. Pastrana and co-driver Christian Edstrom finished 5th in the Rally Mexico — good enough to score four championship points. Then they finished 10th in Argentina after a water crossing caused an engine misfire and a broken suspension nearly ended their rally.
Growing Up
If this sounds like a lot of rallying for a guy who made his name in motorcycles, it is. And the writing is on the wall for Pastrana's future as a competitor and athlete. Look him up on Wikipedia and you'll find a two-paragraph stack of injuries that makes most NFL veterans' war wounds look like a mild headache. And he's had enough of it.
The risk of two-wheeled competition doesn't always outweigh the reward anymore. "I've got to pick and choose [events] carefully now," he admits. "For me, it's all about fun. If I'm having fun I'll do it, but I don't have a lot to prove in freestyle anymore." A double backflip will do that, we suppose.
Pastrana says the switch to rallying is partly because he's sick of spending his life in a hospital bed. In motocross the constant pressure to perform with injuries is inevitable. "In motocross you'll break something one week and be expected to race the following weekend. Priorities are different when you're 30 than they are when you're 15." Smart, calculated words for a guy who's still got more than six years before his 30th birthday.
Motivation
Listen to him for long and you'll find a common theme running between every sentence about motorcycles and cars: a love for competition at the highest level. He pulls no punches about wanting to race and win against the best.
It's this insatiable hunger to compete at the highest level that probably cost him a 250cc Supercross championship (he won the 2000 125cc Motocross National Championship in his rookie year and was the 2001 125cc East Supercross Series champion). Pastrana's huge success in the 125s was inspiring, but he wasn't happy sitting through the main event when the 250s rolled out. "I skipped a lot of steps I should have taken to get there, but I don't feel like it's a true win unless you're going against the best."
So who does he keep on his hero list? "The guys I looked up to are not necessarily the ones with the most wins. I admire those who always gave it 100 percent and had a good time." In motocross that was Doug Henry. In alternative sports, it's freestyle BMX rider Matt Hoffman. Both are known for what they gave their fans more than for outright wins. Watch Pastrana work the crowd during a freestyle run or before a rally and you'll see he shares their attitude for giving back.
Road to the WRC
Despite undeniable talent, Pastrana is every bit the humble, polite and excitable character you see on television. Spend an afternoon with him and you'd never know you're in the presence of an extreme sports superstar. He's quick to point out that he's still learning as a rally driver. He's also refreshingly realistic. Two years is a realistic goal to be competitive in the P-WRC. After that, if there's been much success, he can hope to be picked up by a WRC team. This schedule makes him 25 when he hits the big time, which, according to 11-time U.S. National Pro Rally Champion John Buffum who is Pastrana's sporting advisor and driving coach, is the perfect age.
Rallying, for all its nuance, isn't known as a young man's sport. Tommi Mäkinen, who shares the honor of being one of two men to win the World Rally Championship four times, won his first title at 32 and his last at 35. Pastrana points to 1984 world champ Stig Blomquist, who, at 59, did serious damage to his title hopes during the 2005 Rally America season.
Plus, the WRC is the big time — budgets are massive and manufacturers play to win. No one in the Pastrana camp is ignorant of these facts, which is why they've hired some big guns to smooth the transition for Pastrana and company. Derek Dauncey, the man who managed Mitsubishi's WRC effort during Mäkinen's championship years, has been brought on board to guide the team into the P-WRC.
"The window to get Travis in [to the WRC] is small," says team principal Lance Smith. With an abundance of competitive drivers and very few WRC rides available, the odds are stacked against every driver — massive talent or not.
But Buffum knows there's more to it than sheer talent. "We'll know in two years if Travis has the talent to make the big time," he says. Even so, any good driver will tell you that auto racing is the only form of competition where talent guarantees you nothing.
Luckily, Pastrana has some momentum behind his name. Right now his popularity outweighs even the heavyweights of the WRC. In Argentina, Pastrana fans appeared in droves on the rally's rural lanes, and they mobbed him every time he was outside the car. And in Mexico, when world champion Petter Solberg walked over to talk shop, the combined crowd-pulling power of the two drivers nearly tipped the building on edge.
The Master at Work
Back in the serpentine forest roads with Buffum and navigator Edstrom, we witness the first few steps to the big time. Buffum has laid out a mock rally stage for Pastrana and Edstrom to practice making their own pace notes — like they will do in the P-WRC. But Buffum has measured the exact distances and created his own notes to evaluate Pastrana's ability to judge distance and corner severity. The result is predictable Pastrana.
Even the obtuse, proprietary language of rallying is confident and deliberate as delivered by Pastrana: "...right five opens over 50, tightens, five minus and left four plus, 100, keep left over absolute crest, 200...." It sounds as if it's as easy for him as a single backflip.
It's here, when we can see Buffum's prewritten pace notes matching verbatim with Pastrana's reading of the road, that we realize we might just be riding with the next — and only — American WRC driver. Even the usually stoic Buffum can't hide his enthusiasm for this talent and gives a quick wink as if to say, "Watch this kid, he's got something special."
By the way, that "absolute" in the above pace note translates to "don't lift" — car guy talk for "Keep the throttle down." Pastrana's notes are filled with it. In case his record-breaking freestyle stunts, multiple extreme sports videos and long list of broken body parts hadn't already given it away, he's simply not afraid of anything.
The Odds
Pastrana has a long road ahead of him. Statistically, earning a ride in the WRC is more difficult than driving in Formula One. And winning in the WRC is another matter entirely. But this weekend's (August 2-5) X Games 13, the ongoing Rally America Series and the P-WRC will give U.S. rally fans hope as Pastrana plays out his talent for the world to see.
Currently he's 2nd in the Rally America series, with three events remaining. And if he's able to stop McRae again at the X Games, then who's to say the big players in the WRC aren't next on his list?
It's an assessment that's hard to argue with.
Two days after that historic motorcycle trick, Travis Pastrana jumped a Subaru WRX and beat former World Rally Champion Colin McRae at his own game. In a dramatic, too-weird-to-be-true twist, McRae rolled his WRX on the last jump before the finish, giving up just enough time to earn Pastrana the win and prove that he is, in fact, a force to be reckoned with on four wheels.
It was this twist of X Games fate that gave the previously rally-numb U.S. audience a sense for the spectacle of the sport. And it opened many eyes to the talent of a driver better known for defying physics with a motorcycle.
We arranged a few days with Pastrana and the Subaru Rally Team USA before this year's Olympus Rally outside of Shelton, Washington, in May. Our only real interview time, however, was squeezed in as Pastrana changed clothes in the backseat of a rented SUV between the rally's press stage and an impromptu pace-note practice session.
Ironically, it's little-known back roads like these through the Cascade Range that will define Pastrana's future on rallying's world stage. Pastrana, who's more accustomed to competing in front of thousands of screaming fans, barely sleeping and spending plenty of time in doctors' offices and emergency rooms, is still in his element. And it's immediately evident that he's as passionate about rallying as he's ever been about competing on two wheels.
Young and Fast
Last year, with Subaru's help, Pastrana became the youngest driver to ever win the U.S. Rally Championship, and listening to him talk about the sport is how we imagine Valentino Rossi might talk about racing motorcycles or how Michael Schumacher might prattle on about F1. There's a clear love for the sport, mixed with more maturity and realism than we'd expect from a 23-year-old best known for performing death-defying tricks on a motorcycle.
Rallying in the U.S. isn't like F1 or Moto GP in Europe. As the redheaded stepchild of American motorsport, its popularity continues to wane despite semi-regular manufacturer support. But Subaru's brand image is based on rallying. The carmaker is serious and so is Pastrana. Serious enough, in fact, that the ultimate goal isn't winning in North America at all. Pastrana's sights are set on the World Rally Championship (WRC), and with Subaru's support it seems possible. This year the team will run three rounds of the Production car World Rally Championship (P-WRC) and next year it plans to run the entire series (eight races) in addition to the nine-round Rally America Championship series where it currently competes.
Two rounds of the 2007 P-WRC are already in the books. Pastrana and co-driver Christian Edstrom finished 5th in the Rally Mexico — good enough to score four championship points. Then they finished 10th in Argentina after a water crossing caused an engine misfire and a broken suspension nearly ended their rally.
Growing Up
If this sounds like a lot of rallying for a guy who made his name in motorcycles, it is. And the writing is on the wall for Pastrana's future as a competitor and athlete. Look him up on Wikipedia and you'll find a two-paragraph stack of injuries that makes most NFL veterans' war wounds look like a mild headache. And he's had enough of it.
The risk of two-wheeled competition doesn't always outweigh the reward anymore. "I've got to pick and choose [events] carefully now," he admits. "For me, it's all about fun. If I'm having fun I'll do it, but I don't have a lot to prove in freestyle anymore." A double backflip will do that, we suppose.
Pastrana says the switch to rallying is partly because he's sick of spending his life in a hospital bed. In motocross the constant pressure to perform with injuries is inevitable. "In motocross you'll break something one week and be expected to race the following weekend. Priorities are different when you're 30 than they are when you're 15." Smart, calculated words for a guy who's still got more than six years before his 30th birthday.
Motivation
Listen to him for long and you'll find a common theme running between every sentence about motorcycles and cars: a love for competition at the highest level. He pulls no punches about wanting to race and win against the best.
It's this insatiable hunger to compete at the highest level that probably cost him a 250cc Supercross championship (he won the 2000 125cc Motocross National Championship in his rookie year and was the 2001 125cc East Supercross Series champion). Pastrana's huge success in the 125s was inspiring, but he wasn't happy sitting through the main event when the 250s rolled out. "I skipped a lot of steps I should have taken to get there, but I don't feel like it's a true win unless you're going against the best."
So who does he keep on his hero list? "The guys I looked up to are not necessarily the ones with the most wins. I admire those who always gave it 100 percent and had a good time." In motocross that was Doug Henry. In alternative sports, it's freestyle BMX rider Matt Hoffman. Both are known for what they gave their fans more than for outright wins. Watch Pastrana work the crowd during a freestyle run or before a rally and you'll see he shares their attitude for giving back.
Road to the WRC
Despite undeniable talent, Pastrana is every bit the humble, polite and excitable character you see on television. Spend an afternoon with him and you'd never know you're in the presence of an extreme sports superstar. He's quick to point out that he's still learning as a rally driver. He's also refreshingly realistic. Two years is a realistic goal to be competitive in the P-WRC. After that, if there's been much success, he can hope to be picked up by a WRC team. This schedule makes him 25 when he hits the big time, which, according to 11-time U.S. National Pro Rally Champion John Buffum who is Pastrana's sporting advisor and driving coach, is the perfect age.
Rallying, for all its nuance, isn't known as a young man's sport. Tommi Mäkinen, who shares the honor of being one of two men to win the World Rally Championship four times, won his first title at 32 and his last at 35. Pastrana points to 1984 world champ Stig Blomquist, who, at 59, did serious damage to his title hopes during the 2005 Rally America season.
Plus, the WRC is the big time — budgets are massive and manufacturers play to win. No one in the Pastrana camp is ignorant of these facts, which is why they've hired some big guns to smooth the transition for Pastrana and company. Derek Dauncey, the man who managed Mitsubishi's WRC effort during Mäkinen's championship years, has been brought on board to guide the team into the P-WRC.
"The window to get Travis in [to the WRC] is small," says team principal Lance Smith. With an abundance of competitive drivers and very few WRC rides available, the odds are stacked against every driver — massive talent or not.
But Buffum knows there's more to it than sheer talent. "We'll know in two years if Travis has the talent to make the big time," he says. Even so, any good driver will tell you that auto racing is the only form of competition where talent guarantees you nothing.
Luckily, Pastrana has some momentum behind his name. Right now his popularity outweighs even the heavyweights of the WRC. In Argentina, Pastrana fans appeared in droves on the rally's rural lanes, and they mobbed him every time he was outside the car. And in Mexico, when world champion Petter Solberg walked over to talk shop, the combined crowd-pulling power of the two drivers nearly tipped the building on edge.
The Master at Work
Back in the serpentine forest roads with Buffum and navigator Edstrom, we witness the first few steps to the big time. Buffum has laid out a mock rally stage for Pastrana and Edstrom to practice making their own pace notes — like they will do in the P-WRC. But Buffum has measured the exact distances and created his own notes to evaluate Pastrana's ability to judge distance and corner severity. The result is predictable Pastrana.
Even the obtuse, proprietary language of rallying is confident and deliberate as delivered by Pastrana: "...right five opens over 50, tightens, five minus and left four plus, 100, keep left over absolute crest, 200...." It sounds as if it's as easy for him as a single backflip.
It's here, when we can see Buffum's prewritten pace notes matching verbatim with Pastrana's reading of the road, that we realize we might just be riding with the next — and only — American WRC driver. Even the usually stoic Buffum can't hide his enthusiasm for this talent and gives a quick wink as if to say, "Watch this kid, he's got something special."
By the way, that "absolute" in the above pace note translates to "don't lift" — car guy talk for "Keep the throttle down." Pastrana's notes are filled with it. In case his record-breaking freestyle stunts, multiple extreme sports videos and long list of broken body parts hadn't already given it away, he's simply not afraid of anything.
The Odds
Pastrana has a long road ahead of him. Statistically, earning a ride in the WRC is more difficult than driving in Formula One. And winning in the WRC is another matter entirely. But this weekend's (August 2-5) X Games 13, the ongoing Rally America Series and the P-WRC will give U.S. rally fans hope as Pastrana plays out his talent for the world to see.
Currently he's 2nd in the Rally America series, with three events remaining. And if he's able to stop McRae again at the X Games, then who's to say the big players in the WRC aren't next on his list?
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