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Written by:
Bill Wood
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
08/13/2007 - 07:00 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.
The success of American muscle like the Tanaka Corvette will move drifting from cult to mainstream status. (Bill Wood photo) » More Photos
One day we may look back at the last two weeks and remember that two Tuner mainstays were reset with the emergence of OGs – or, shall we say, Old Guys – to give those sports needed significance and continuity. The emergence of American rallying and drifting can only enhance the sports' futures.
All the rally attention at last weekend's X Games 13 Rally Car Racing competition was centered on last year's Gold Medalist Travis Pastrana, the return of Silver Medalist Colin McRae and the "at-large" presence of super-racer Boris Said. All are headliners to be sure but the sport's credibility is in the continued presence of the biggest and most significant OG in American rally history, 11-time champion John Buffum. John works tirelessly now to pass along his considerable knowledge to Pastrana and Travis' Vermont Sports Car teammate Ken Block, last year's Bronze Medalist at the X Games and a former points leader in the 2007 Rally America championship.
Buffum, in fact, helped introduce rallying to Boris in a one-day parking lot seminar before Said left for the NASCAR Busch Series race in Montreal the same weekend. While Said was away, John played in the VSC-prepped BFGoodrich Subaru that Boris used in the X Games.
"We texted back and forth a couple things," Buffum says with a smile. "The last thing texted back to me was, 'Don't hurt my car!' By that time I had done what I wanted to get done with the car." As a driver, Buffum hated the pavement stages that are now called Super Specials. John was a former road racer who dropped asphalt for the forests, where he found his basket of championships. But Buffum will be 62 in October, and his outlook on Super Specials and Super Stars has changed. Radically.
"It's very difficult to get the spectators to come out into the woods. But now we can bring our sport to them," he
Current rally arenas weren't even imagined when John was competing. We talked wistfully of live, national network television coverage all those years ago. Now it exists through the X Games, and Buffum is there to make sure the sport is presented properly.
Travis Pastrana may one day be an OG in American Rallying – but not yet. (Lorne Tresize photo) » More Photos
Stay on top of the ever-changing face of sports car racing each month in RACER. Peter Brock relates how Audi and Peugeot's diesel duel at Le Mans is changing the technical landscape in our September issue, on sale now.
Oddly enough, the same thing is beginning to happen with drifting, a sport barely out of diapers when compared to rallying but one square in the radar of its target audience and one that's tangential to a sports car crowd. That makes last weekend's appearance of two OGs at Infineon Raceway for Round Five of the 2007 Formula Drift season all the more significant.
Infineon is promoted as "The Fastest in the Circuit." The course twists between NASCAR Turns Four and Five on the Sonoma road course. For a speed reference, I'm told the front-running Cup cars get up to 90 or 95mph approaching Turn Five before slamming on the brakes. Last weekend, X Games Rally Car Gold Medalist Tanner Foust went to the same 95mph neighborhood at the same brake point before throwing the car sideways into a drift. The judges said they'd grade him down if he used the handbrake! Foust soldiered on through the course to what was called the sport's first "perfect," 100-point score. The judges gave him a standing ovation and, I'm told, suggested a video of the run be distributed so everyone could see what they were looking for.
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