Subaru Motorsports USA driver Travis Pastrana has said his goal is simple for this weekend’s Show-Me Rally: to win.
Pastrana won the latest American Rally Association National championship round, Ojibwe Forests Rally, at the end of August on his first rally with Rhiannon Gelsomino as co-driver, with the pair continuing that partnership this weekend.
But Pastrana is facing an uphill battle to beat Barry McKenna to this year’s title after not starting the Sno*Drift Rally and his car burning out on Southern Ohio Forest Rally. Meanwhile McKenna has two wins and a second place to his name.
It means that to stand any chance of a second ARA National crown and sixth US rally title in total, Pastrana needs to win and for McKenna to not make the top five this weekend.
“[The] championship is pretty much out of reach but our goal is simple: win every race from here on out,” Pastrana told DirtFish.
“That’ll be really difficult because Barry’s on his game and he is super fast here.”
McKenna won the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood last year – an event that shares several stages with Show-Me Rally – and has switched back to a Ford Fiesta WRC this weekend instead of the Škoda Fabia Rally2 he has used on the previous two rounds.
Pastrana was seeded first for the draw to start tonight’s road order, and opted to go third behind McKenna and his own Subaru team-mate Brandon Semenuk. But he’s aware that decision might backfire.
“Hopefully it’s not too dusty,” Pastrana said. “We drew first in the seeded draw but picked third because the roads, they’re going to clear a lot but I’m a little concerned about the second set of stages if it’s pretty dusty.
“If the wind isn’t anything then there’ll definitely be an advantage being first on the road. Barry drew second and picked first. Again, Semenuk and [co-driver John] Hall were quickest in our test so it shows he definitely has the pace once he knows the roads, it’s just working on trying to find the limits of the car on the first run by.”
Friday’s itinerary features two stages repeated after service that will run into the night. Saturday then features six more stages to total 10 tests at a competitive distance of around 80 miles.
Top speed is expected to be a factor in the results and explains why McKenna has brought his Fiesta WRC rather than the Fabia Rally2. Pastrana is expecting the advantage he enjoyed on the straights in Ojibwe to be reversed in Missouri.
“I believe that definitely with the Škoda he has an advantage on the tighter stuff, just because of the size of the car, but when we hit the faster stuff we definitely had the advantage with the Subarus,” Pastrana explained.
“So it almost switches [this weekend] where I feel like we definitely have the advantage with the Subarus with the handling characteristics and everything on the tighter stuff but there’s so many roads that are just flat out. I’m not 100% sure, I don’t know what his top speed is but likely his top speed will be higher than what our top speed gearing is.
“We’ve actually gone down a little bit with the top speed just for the overall, I kind of thought we might have gone with a different gearbox for this one just based off of what the speeds were last rally. I was reaching for sixth gear often and was like we need another gear! So on the fast roads that could play a major part so we’ll so how that does.”
