OpenPaddock RallyCast

If you're a dedicated rally fan like us, then you're probably an avid watcher of the Subaru Launch Control series. The series has always been well produced, beautifully shot, and brought out some of the great stories from the sharp end of the field. However, after 9 successful seasons it was time for a change.  We chatted with Warwick Paterson of Formula Photographic and Chris Bowes of Bowes Media about what's going to be different in the new season and why.  

In this episode we chat with Sam Albert, one of the fastest privateers in the ARA. Sam's always very open about and honest about his thoughts on the championship, so we decided to give him a call to discuss the upcoming ARA Open Class rules for 2023, how it might affect privateer drivers like him, and his goal of putting a Ferrari engine into his Subaru WRX STI. Yes, you heard that right. So grab a cold one and join us for another round at the virtual rally pub we call the RallyCast podcast.

This episode is another one that was temporarily lost due to technical issues.  Back in March we talked in depth with Mark Piatkowski about what it was like transitioning from his NA4 Subaru that he works on mostly himself to a full blown homologated M-Sport Rally2 Ford Fiesta with all the bells and whistles at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood. 

This is a re-release of an episode from a couple months that had technical issues. We chatted with  talked with Alex and Rhianon Gelsomino about their 100 Acre Wood experience, the current top level of competition this year and dodging wildlife. We also chatted with Leon Jordan of McKenna Motorsports about WRC cars and what makes theirs different from the Hyundai i20 used by Hoonigan. This was all recorded before the new ARA 2023 Open 4WD guidelines were released.

In this episode we chatted with one of American rallying's biggest advocates, Bryce Proseus. He tells us about how just going to see his first stage rally was an adventure in itself. The hook was set and it wasn't long before he wanted to get into co-driving which led to a dramatic barn hunt for a working motor having blown the original one in pre event test. But the adventures of Bryce Proseus certainly doesn't stop there. In one of his grandest adventures he chose to take his rallying experience to the next level by competing in Rally Moto at Sandblast earlier this year. In true Proseus style, he had challenges just making it to the start line, let alone getting to the finish. 

This is a special episode in conjunction with Dirtfish and their celebration of Women in Motorsports. In this show your host took a bit of a backseat and let the guests drive the discussion on this important subject. Topics ranged from their personal experiences, ways we as a community can better support and encourage more women to be a part of our rally family, and some of the great things that Dirtfish is doing specifically to expand the coverage of women in our sport.

Don’t forget the Dirtfish Women’s Summit available to attend for free March 10th. Details are here:  https://dirtfish.com/womens-month/ 

For women looking for a career in motorsports, the FIA Women in Motorsports careers booklet Leanne mentioned in the show is here: https://www.fia.com/multimedia/publication/your-career-motor-sport 

For those women more specifically interested in the engineering path, the FIA has a program with their touring car championship that can be found here:  https://www.fia.com/careers-motor-sport

One of my favorite things at a rally is to get a quick word with competitors as soon as I can after they finished. You get some of that raw emotion of their success, whether that’s just getting to the finish or winning their class.  Although I wasn’t physically at Sno*Drift, I called up several competitors to get their reactions from this year's unusually slick event, soon after they slid past the icy finish boards. You’ll hear from overall winner Mark Piatkowski, Regional Overall winner Ivo Draganov, as well as Patrick Gruszka, Al Dantes Jr., Julien Sebot, and Stephen and Katie Gingras.

In this episode we go to the very sharp end of the ARA field of competitors and chat with Subaru Motorsports USA's Travis Pastrana and Rhianon Gelsomino. Travis gives us a rather long medical list of why he had to miss Sno*Drift, even though he tried to convince his doctors he could still compete. Rhianon tells us about how much extra work she and Travis are doing to keep a competitive advantage as their closest competition switched to top level WRC machinery, and why her dad is both her biggest supporter and her greatest critic. We get into technical insights into the challenges of driving with the aero improvements on the Subaru, what performance level they'd like to see the top class of ARA move to in the future, and somewhere in there elephant poop is mentioned. So join us for another round at the virtual rally pub we call, the RallyCast podcast.

In Part 2 of our chat with ARA Competition Director Preston Osborn we move on from the recent rule changes and get into the future of ARA and what it’s goals are in both the short and long term.

A few weeks back we had a long call with ARA Competition Director Preston Osborn to talk about what’s new for the 2022 season. We had so much to talk about that we felt it best to split it into two episodes. So in this Part 1 we discussed what was learned over the 2021 season and he detailed the new rule changes for 2022 and the reasoning behind them. So grab a nice Sno*Drift chilled beverage from the virtual rally pub we call, the RallyCast.