ARA’s weakness is also its biggest strength

Cultural differences. I’m still getting used to them as a European venturing into the United States of America.

There’s the small stuff: the prices on shelves being pre-tax rather than inclusive of tax, half-and-half being the go-to for putting in coffee and being asked for ID everywhere despite my teenage years being long behind me.

Then there’s the big stuff. In Europe, we lean heavily on the FIA’s rally pyramid as the basis for national championships. Rally2 as the top level, with Rally3 and Rally4 as the main support classes, is the norm.

But this is the land of the brave and the home of the free. Removing red tape to allow innovation and opportunity is ingrained into American culture. As a first-timer visiting an American Rally Association rally last week in Oregon, this reality dawned on me rapidly.

I’m a framework guy. Pick a set of regulations and have manufacturers consistently build a quality product to an equalized specification, thus ensuring competition. It’s hard not to look at Rally2 as anything other than a resounding success for achieving that goal in Europe. And even outside FIA regulations, competitions like the old Volant Peugeot series that Sébastiens Loeb and Ogier cut their teeth in as rally newcomers was an excellent proving ground as a consequence of its one-make approach.

Those cars are a rarity in the USA – predominantly due to completely absurd import regulations. The only time a true Rally2 car won an ARA round before Ricardo Cordero’s Oregon Trail Rally success last week was Barry McKenna piloting a Ford Fiesta to the top step at Sno*Drift 2020 (his wins in a Škoda Fabia were in a power-boosted car, so not true to the original regulations).

This causes a problem at the top end of town in ARA. The clue’s in the name: Open 4WD. Open. Do whatever the hell you want, within reason. It does mean Subaru tends to disappear into the distance.

Except this time Subaru didn’t disappear by going forwards. They disappeared by retiring.

My first time visiting an ARA round and after 12 consecutive wins, Brandon Semenuk’s winning streak ends – courtesy of hitting a rock that Travis Pastrana dragged onto the line and also broke his own WRX STI with. The reason, according, to Semenuk’s co-driver Keaton Williams, was obvious.

“You’re bad luck, you are,” joked Williams as I strolled up to the site of Semenuk’s stranded car within the Dalles Mountain stage.

Williams is right, clearly. But it was also good luck. Now the locals would be on the same voyage of discovery as I was – what happens when there’s no winners’ headline to write about the blue and yellow cars?

In the end, the formula car won. Cordero managed his rally beautifully, without encountering any major issues, and reaped the rewards with a first ARA victory. I suspect he’ll be back for more.

But it’s another car that showed that, even when the tightly regulated Rally2 car seized the day, the star of the show was a home build. Sam Albert’s Ferrari-powered Subaru is the epitome of why the ARA has a double-edged sword on its hands.

Bringing the fight to Subaru is extremely difficult while Open 4WD exists. But without it, there would be no V8-powered Subaru either. And this car is the epitome of what makes ARA good.

A moment on the final pass of Dalles Mountain epitomized this paradigm. Pastrana had stopped to change a wheel and was running out of order, falling behind Cordero and slotting between the Citroën C3 Rally2 and Albert’s Subaru in the road order.

The spectator hairpin doesn’t have a great view of what comes before it – a huge bank blocks the view further up the hill, so you’ll hear cars coming well before they show up. When standing at hairpin, it was hard to tell which car would come first. The roaring torque of Albert’s Ferrari California engine growled first, yet Pastrana was first into sight.

Albert didn’t win – but this was down to rotten luck as much as anything else. Without the punctures, who knows how hard he would have pushed Cordero for the top spot? And he’d have done it with a home build, up against the might of Citroën’s engineering prowess.

I can’t help but be reminded of Andy Burton’s Peugeot 306 Cosworth, a car that dominated the British rallying scene for years. But the point was the result didn’t really matter – just listen to it. It’s one of those cars that pushes you to follow through if you’re on the fence about travelling to a rally. It cannot be missed.

And then further down the field is another home build – Sean Edwards’ Volvo 242. Buying an old Subaru would have been the easy route – instead, when the rear axle broke after the spectator-friendly Portland International Raceway stage, he reached out to fellow Volvo enthusiasts and – with permission – had to wander into someone’s backyard at 2am to get hold of a full rear axle assembly.

The phrase ‘built not bought’ comes to mind. FIA-homologated cars have huge upsides – but in ARA, the pride in building and running your own car no matter the class is core to its character. Standardization would mean no V8s being shoehorned into a Subaru or a Chevy Sonic. It would probably mean no BMWs bought on a four-figure budget running at National level.

I went to Oregon to listen and learn. I stayed quiet in the background observing, processing the culture shock and understanding what it means to be an ARA competitor. My mentality has always been to win at all costs and break anything that needs to be broken on the way there. But this is not how US rallying works for the masses – Edwards explaining that he’ll leave an inch here and there to avoid sticking his resplendent black Volvo into the bushes is telling. It goes beyond the stage times – each entrant has their own car build journey to get here.

There is no formula here. I’m learning what it means to go rallying and how to cover it all over again. It was a bit of a culture shock. But with each trip Stateside, I get a little more acclimatized. Roll on Ohio.