I’m pretty sure that driving while you really, really have to take a shit is at least as dangerous as driving drunk. Your body tenses up, your focus shifts from the road ahead to the road within, on which you’re desperately trying to stop the flow of, um, traffic—it’s just dangerous. Better to pull over and find a…
When you think of cars and racing in Germany, you tend to think of stuff happening on circuits, like DTM or the Nürburgring. But this year’s World Rally Championship round might change your focus. This looked fast and sketchy as all hell.
Toyota Yaris driver Ott Tänak dominated this weekend’s Rallye Deutschland after a hard fight for the overall lead with former teammate Sébastien Ogier, now at Ford. I was there, and, if I’m honest, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to help shove a car back on the road.
A new Porsche race car is hardly news when it goes to the track. They have to do absurd things like break 35-year-old Nürburgring records to get our attention. Now, when a Porsche is built for off the track—that’s special. The rally Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport was the true highlight of Rallye Deutschland, and it…
Believe it or not, I have never been to a stage rally. I’m all but surrounded by various drivers and codrivers, but I haven’t seen them rally. Naturally, my first trip to a rally should be a full World Rally Championship round. That’s why I’m finally here at Rallye Deutschland. I want to see loud cars shoot flames and…
Citroën fired their World Rally Championship driver Kris Meeke and his codriver Paul Nagle “due to an excessively high number of crashes,” per a statement released by the team today. This comes less than a week after Meeke had one of the worst-looking crashes of his career at the attrition-heavy Rally de Portugal.
Earlier on Saturday morning, during the first run of the Amarante stage of Rally Portugal, Kris Meeke collided with a tree and absolutely demolished his Citroën. During a fast left-hand turn, Meeke went off the road and wasn’t able to stop before he and his co-driver Paul Nagle were thrown into the forest.
I would like to give a shout out to Andreas Mikkelsen, World Rally Championship probably future champion, for this video explainer that technically it’s not crashing if you fly back onto the road.
The World Rally Championship (aka Real NASCAR) is visiting the island of Corsica at the moment, nicknamed the Rally of 10,000 Corners, with some of the twistiest, most challenging roads on the planet.
NASCAR has many terrible things associated with it, but it has committed perhaps no higher crime than its deep-seated affectation for nostalgia. “Oh yeah, back in the 1950s it was guys in STOCK CARS RACIN’ ON DEERT!” This is dumb, because we still have this. It’s called the World Rally Championship.
Sébastien Ogier isn’t just a ludicrously fast man. He’s also a good dude to our four-legged friends. Five-time World Rally Championship winner Ogier nearly lost his chance to beat the WRC’s other fast Seb, nine-time WRC champ Sébastien Loeb, at Rally México. Ogier had to risk his own finish to avoid hitting a dog on…
Kris Meeke has not had a very easy go in Mexico today, tipping his Citroen over and losing 36.6 seconds in the process. Meeke says, “I just was just coming on to the cobbles and the car slid. A deep gulley on the outside caught a wheel and put us on our side.” Sebastien Ogier leads.
Colin’s Crest is one of the most delightful parts of Rally Sweden. Every year, the organizers have a mini competition on the Vargåsen stage as to who jumps the farthest over one particular crazy fast jump. Hyundai driver Thierry Neuville didn’t win the Colin’s Crest Award, but his jump was insane for other reasons.
Rally Sweden was a winter wonderland this year, but not for the drivers who went first. The first cars on a snowy stage inevitably act as snowplows for everyone behind them—and those later competitors then go faster on the clearer roads. One driver at Sweden had enough, so he arrived late to one stage, breaking the…
Canada isn’t just for chuggling maple syrup on a snowmobile while pretending to be the God of Snow. It also hosts incredible rallies, including some utterly brutal snow rallies. The only thing missing is the present-day World Rally Championship cars, and fortunately, the Rally Promoter Association of Canada announced…
Rules enacted last season have made the cars of the World Rally Championship delightfully extreme, wider, more powerful and more wonderful than they have been in years. Please watch as Jari-Matti Latvala absolutely hucks his Toyota Yaris sideways in a test session in Sweden as a demonstration of what I mean.
Not a single sports car finished this year’s Rallye Monte Carlo, which is a bummer. Sports cars belong in rallying.
Rally drivers are the best drivers, and the best rally drivers run in the World Rally Championship. So it’s fun to watch even them struggle to even stay on the road on a particularly icy opening stage at this year’s Rallye Monte Carlo.
