Subaru of America, Inc. announced today that it would be returning to the Rally America National Championship in the Open class with a 2-car program in 2011.  Led by current Subaru Rally Team USA (SRT USA) driver Dave Mirra and joined by British seasoned rally driver David Higgins; each driver will be piloting a Subaru Impreza WRX STI prepared and fielded by technical partner Vermont SportsCar. Higgins brings extensive rallying experience to SRT USA, most recently competing in the Chinese Rally Championship having gone on to help his team secure championship titles in 2004, 2007 and 2009.

The inaugural Gymkhana Grid Racing Series event, The Ken Block Invitational took over the Toyota Irwindale Speedway in Southern California this past weekend. The event was a huge success with nearly 6,000 people coming out to Saturday’s finals and more than 375,000 people tuning into the two-day live webcast.
“The Gymkhana Grid event turned out amazing,” said Ken. “I was stoked to help bring the fun and excitement from my videos back to the competition-based roots of real head-to-head gymkhana. DC has been a great partner through out the Gymkhana videos and I was happy to have them support this next venture in the sport of gymkhana.”

The New York Rally Championship (NYRC) held its 4th annual “Night of Champions” at The Porter House (http://www.porterhouseusa.com) in Montvale, NJ last Saturday night. The event and the awards were sponsored by Michael Cosgrove and John “Finnian” Owens of Midwestern Sheet Metal Inc. and Fintan Seeley, the proprietor of The Porter House, all Rally New York competitors. Photos are at http://www.rallynewyork.net/nyrc.htm. New York and the Northeast of the United States are the home of many rally teams. The New York Rally Championship gives these teams the opportunity to take part in a meaningful local Regional Championship without traveling to distant locations.

Shell Racing Solutions is proud to announce that Corey Oil has been named as a direct distributor for Shell Racing Fuels new line of Unleaded Racing Technology (URT) fuels. Shell Racing Solutions is nowoffering Shell URT fuels in the United States and is proud to have Corey Oil as a new distributor. Corey Oil will carry the entire line of Shell Racing Solutions URT Fuels and distribute in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. The Shell Racing Solutions URT portfolio consists of fuels for all racing applications in the United States. The patent pending URT Advanced formulations eliminate the need for the traditional leaded racing fuels currently in the market. The Shell Racing Solutions URT Fuels portfolio consists of Shell Racing Fuel URT 100, Shell Racing Fuel URT 105 and the unique Shell Racing Fuel URT Advanced.

Rally GB, the ninth and final event in the FIA Production Car World Rally Championship (P-WRC) was held from November 11-14, based in the capital of Wales, Cardiff. Title hopeful, Sweden’s Patrik Flodin had a change in fortune to finish fifth, and ended the season second in the championship. As has happened on many occasions, Rally GB was the final event on the WRC calendar. Following the ceremonial start on the evening of November 11, the rally consisted of 20 stages and 359.44 kilometres of racing. Apart from Flodin, other Subaru entrants included Toshi Arai (Japan), Gianluca Linari (Italy), Rui Wang (China), Anders Grondal (Norway) and Spyros Pavlides (Cyprus). Two wildcard entrants were provided by the host country’s ASN, 20-year-old David Weston Jr. (Great Britain) and Jason Pritchard (Great Britain).

Nitto Tire U.S.A. and sponsored driver, John Urist, entered the 2010 NMRA drag racing season with four consecutive wins to their credit. Despite having the most wins in Super Street Outlaw class history, the team entered the season finale as an underdog, trailing first-place leader John Macdonald by 160 points. Through John’s good fortune, he ended the day victorious, making him the 2010 champion in one of the closest points races in class history. In commemoration of his victory, Urist will be awarded the coveted Nitto Champion Diamond Tree™ Ring. With this win Urist becomes the only driver in NMRA history to win five consecutive championships. This is his sixth career win.

In their first event ever, Aaron Ekinaka and Albert Goad in the DirtyImpreza.com Rally Team (DIRT) Project RS took the win in CRS-GT and USRC Production AWD at Prescott Rally this past October 1st and 2nd. Seeded dead last in 22nd position to start, their goal was to drive clean and smooth in order to finish the rally with destroying the recently built 2001 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS. Their strategy paid off as over the two days they were able to advance up the leader board into 10th position overall. This feat was acknowledged at the awards ceremony by MSI and event organizer Michael Taylor in the form of a check for $50 to the “Most Improved Driver”.

At the 2010 running of the Prescott Rally, east coast teams met with west coast teams for a showdown that would determine who would take top honors in the United States Rally Championship (USRC). Keith Jackson and Marra Estep were defending their title as USRC 2009 Open AWD class champions as they attacked the narrow, winding stages that worked their way up and down the mountains near Prescott, Arizona. The DIRT / Jackson Rally 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STi had been meticulously prepared for this final event.

Officials at RallyCar™ are pleased to announce the six event 2011 Rally America National Championship schedule. The 2011 Rally America National Championship is unchanged from 2010 beginning with the perennial winter favorite, Sno*Drift Rally in Northern Michigan January 28-29, 2011. The Championship will visit the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood in Missouri on February 25-26, where fan attendance nearly doubled in 2010, before swinging to the West Coast for the Olympus Rally April 30 and May 1 and Oregon Trail Rally May 13-15, 2011. The Championship will then shift it’s focus eastward stopping at the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania on June 3-4 before ending the season at the New England Forest Rally which takes place at the Sunday River Resort in Newry, Maine and Errol, New Hampshire July 15-16, 2011.

Drift fans will want to buckle up for the DIRECTV broadcast of the world’s first drifting event in 3D. Produced by Formula DRIFT and DIRECTV, the program will focus on a series of battles from Formula DRIFT’s “Round 7, Title Fight” and will be aired exclusively on DIRECTV’s 3D channel, n3D, Powered by Panasonic, later this year. “Formula DRIFT has always been on the forefront of technology,” said Ryan Sage, vice-president and co-founder of Formula DRIFT. “We were the first drifting series to provide HD television programming, live streaming event content via the DriftStream, and now we are adding 3D technology for our tech savvy audience.”

Round 8 of the FIA Production Car World Rally Championship (P-WRC), “Rally de France” was held in Alsace in Eastern France from October 1 - 3 with Japanese driver Toshi Arai finishing third in his WRX STI. The WRC event in France has become a completely new rally, moving from its long-time base in Corsica to Alsace near the German border. Along with Arai, the line-up of Subaru P-WRC drivers in this new-look rally was Anders Grondal (Norway), Gianluca Linari (Italy), Rui Wang (China), Nuno Barroso Pereira (Portugal) and David Weston Jr. (UK). Taking part in his first P-WRC event at the tender age of 20, the Brit drove for Uspenskiy Rally Tecnica, which substituted him for its regular driver Patrik Flodin who missed this event.

When Chad Gilsinger won his first-ever Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) National Runoffs Championship in his Touring 3-class BFGoodrich® g-Force™ R1™-shod Honda S2000 at Road America, he thought he was at the pinnacle of his motorsports career.  That was until the Honda engineer realized that he had also won the unique BFGoodrich Tires SCCA contingency prize – a spot on BFGoodrich Tires/Wide Open Excursions “Baja Challenge” (BC) race team in the 43rd Annual Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.  The legendary off-road event, to be held Nov. 18 – 21, is on the “bucket list” of most racers, and this year will mark BFGoodrich Tires’ 35th anniversary of toughness, grip and acceleration conquering the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000.

After 4,000 miles of some of the fiercest competition in auto racing, the battle for the 2010 American Le Mans Series Manufacturers and Team championships came down to the very last mile of GT action Saturday night at Road Atlanta. And it was during that last mile that a season’s worth of toil paid off for the BMW Rahal Letterman Racing Team as it clinched both the ALMS Manufacturers and Team titles in just its second year in the series, topping the highly-competitive GT category by just a single point. Finishing fourth while one of the Risi Competizione Ferrari’s were leading would have left the BMW RLR squad one point out of the top spot for the season, but when the Ferrari ran out of fuel less than a mile from the finish line, the title switched hands.

Okay, the field was pretty thin this year at the Redline time attack held last weekend at Spring Mountain, but the GST lap times speak volumes. Gary Sheehan delivered a blistering 2:18.057!  Which is only two thousands of a second off of the AWD lap record from last year by the AMS Evo X, driven by Paul Gerard. Despite this amazing lap time, Gary said that he had some areas on the track where he felt he could have improved his time. But that is the nature of the beast, we always think we can do better. Congratulations to Gary Sheehan and Mike Warfield for having such a tight running car and team!

Out in the middle of the Nevada desert lies 3.1 miles of winding pavement known as Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch. This country club facility is without a doubt one of the nicest stops on the 2010 Redline Time Attack circuit, but it also has a special history as being the site of the first ever Redline Time Attack event back in 2005. Back then, Tarzan Yamada took the event win in the Swift Springs Nissan S15 with a 2:xx.xxx lap. Last year, it was Paul Gerrard in the AMS Performance / NOS Energy Drink Mitsubishi Evo X who emerged victorious with a 2:18.055. The sport, the cars, and the teams have come a long way since the birth of the Redline Time Attack series back in 2005 and this year the progression continued as track records fell in many of the classes.