A mistake on Friday’s final stage by Travis Pastrana means American Rally Association National champion-in-waiting Barry McKenna leads the Show-Me Rally, with Subaru Motorsports USA’s Brandon Semenuk just another 3.4 seconds back.
Four stages were supposed to kick off the Missouri-based events – two tests repeated in the dark – before six stages on Saturday, but the second pass of the 12.38-mile KP to Ollie stage was canceled due to an incident on the first run through that required a competitor to be extracted from their vehicle.
Nevertheless, the action still proved relentless as Pastrana shot into an early lead ahead of McKenna on the 4.43-mile Pandora White River test, setting a time 1.7s quicker than the Ford Fiesta WRC-driving Irishman.
Semenuk then showed his hand, powering to the fastest time in SS2 in his Impreza STI by 7.8s to lead the overall classification by 6.6s from Pastrana heading into first service. McKenna was just another 0.8s back in third.
But as darkness fell and dust began to linger in the stages, McKenna – who was running first on the road – muscled his way back past Semenuk with a stage time exactly 11s quicker than his Subaru rival. As it stands, McKenna will claim his maiden American rally title this weekend with a round to spare.
“Ultimately I’d like the rally win but I only need to finish I think maybe fifth overall to get the championship,” McKenna told DirtFish. “But at the same time I’m here to race.
“We made a wrong tire choice for the first loop of stages, we went too soft and we ended up destroying our tires halfway through the long stage, it was all over the road,” he added.
“We made some adjustments and went with a harder tire for that last loop but unfortunately that last stage was canceled so we didn’t get to get into it again.
“Dust is a big factor. I had the advantage today, I had no dust because I was first on the road. If it’s bad [tomorrow], the dust is bad, I’ll probably just try and play the safe drive and think of the championship.”
Pastrana meanwhile lost close to a minute to leader McKenna on the short SS3 to drop to third, with his Impreza STI sporting right-rear damage that only told half the story.
“Plain and simple I blew it,” he told DirtFish. “There was three of us within eight seconds going into that stage. We had a three-minute window but there were just spots of, I couldn’t see, dust and every time I got a chance to see, I was driving hard and losing more time because I was driving too hard.
“Some of the corners ahead were actually swept pretty nicely, I had great traction so I came over. I’ve had trouble on this rally before, you feel like you’ve got good traction on the crown [of the road] but if you’re coming in a lot hotter and you get on the crown really you only have half the road to work with, and we just made a huge mistake.
Photo: Mason Runkel
“It took us so long because we had two flat tires, double puncture on the right side so we had half the stage to go and we couldn’t turn left,” he added. “Right was fine, left was not so good!
“If you can put 20 seconds in either one of these guys [McKenna and Semenuk] tomorrow, it’ll be amazing. This will be the rally that marks the moment no matter what happens, even if the next stage something goes wrong, this rally is the moment Brandon Semenuk became the biggest threat for the championship. In the dust, tough stages on a rally he’s never been to before and put nine seconds on me and eight seconds on McKenna, that’s really, really strong. That’s David Higgins strong.”
After that praise, Semenuk added his own comments: “We had a really good first leg but then unfortunately stage four got canceled and we only got stage three and we lost some time there so me and Barry are pretty close. The car felt great, super happy with the set-up so if it works for us tomorrow like it did today, hopefully we can hold him [McKenna] back. I’m going to keep pushing, we’ll see if it works out or not.”
Behind the leading trio at the front is Jeff Seehorn who is fourth in his Subaru, ahead of Patrick Brennan’s Ford Fiesta Proto and Zachary Jacques’ Subaru WRX.
Paul Rowley is seventh in a Ford Fiesta R5 with Cameron Steely (Ford Fiesta ST), Gary Donoghue (Mitsubishi Evo IX) and Dave Wallingford (Ford Fiesta R2T) completing the early top 10.
Ryan Booth came to Missouri on the back of two fourth place finishes on the last two ARA National rounds, but it all went wrong rather quickly on the Show-Me Rally. The Ford Fiesta R5 pilot stopped on the opening Pandora White River stage, losing a total of 26 minutes on the test, but was able to recover and complete the day.
Leading positions after SS3
1 McKenna (Ford) 17m00.9s
2 Semenuk (Subaru) +3.4s
3 Pastrana (Subaru) +55.9s
4 Seehorn (Subaru) +1m46.8s
5 Brennan (Ford) +3m29.0s
6 Jacques (Subaru) +3m38.0s
7 Rowley (Ford) +3m44.1s
8 Steely (Ford) +3m52.8s
9 Donoghue (Mitsubishi) +4m11.3s
10 Wallingford (Ford) +4m19.9s
