X Games: Ford Fiesta Trial Sitting and Ride-Along
The X-Games are coming up this weekend here in sunny So-Cal, but the course at the Home Depot Center isn'. yet open for practice. That didn'. stop the Ford Fiesta rally team, fresh from the slopes of the Pike'. Peak hillclimb.
Tanner Foust has been to the X-Games before, you see, and he knows where the track goes. So he laid . facsimilie of the X-Games course with . massive supply of orange cones on the slowly-decaying runways and taxiways of the former El Toro Marine base in nearby Orange County, California.
The team has been very busy in the 9 days since Pike'. Peak ended, painting two cars in Rockstar energy drink colors for Tanner and Metal Mulisha standout Brian Deegan… third car, piloted by former Indy 500 winner and IRL Champion Kenny Brack, sticks with the same red, white and blue paint scheme seen in Colorado.
We stopped in to meet the drivers and see the cars in action.
The team needed the track time at El Toro because although these are the very same cars that were run up Pike's Peak, they needed changes that were much more drastic than mere paint to conform with X-Games rules.
Gone are the massive front and rear wings needed to manipulate the thin air at 10,000 feet. Gone is the 800 horsepower output from the 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, thanks to a mandated 32 mm turbo inlet restrictor that chokes the power output down to some 350 to 400 horsepower (depending on who we asked).
In addition to all this, the team needed a place to adjust the cars to suit the skinnier 15-inch rally tires they're required to use. The X-Games course is part dirt and part asphalt, but gravel tires are the preferred choice and a lot of the test time was allocated to making the Fiesta and its BFG 215/65R15 gravel tires happy on asphalt.
We went for a too-brief ride with Kenny Brack early in the day. Even with half the power they had at PIke's Peak, the car was a rocket. Kenny made use of the handbrake in the three cul-de-sac hairpin corners that dot the cone-marked course, but apart from that the Fiesta tended to rotate quite easlily. It felt more rear-wheel drive than all-wheel drive, though we're told the balance got more neutral as the day progressed.
Someone asked Kenny if he had practiced for the jumps he'll see at the X-Games.
Shaking his head he said, “No, I haven't had a chance.”
“How will you approach it?”
“I'm going to start out long.”
Good plan.
How good? We'll see at 11:00 am on Thursday, July 30 when the first practice session starts on the real course at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.
