New Zealand, November 19, 2006 - The Ford Focus RS World Rally Car 06, which made its Championship debut just over a year ago in Australia, has continued its successful first year in competition by securing the FIA WRC Manufacturers’ Championship 2006 for Ford. With a 25-point lead Ford has secured the Manufacturers’ title even though there is still one final WRC round in this year’s competition – Rally GB, 30 November – 3 December.

This is the first time that Ford has won the Manufacturers’ Championship in 27 years and represents the pinnacle of achievement since Ford of Europe initiated its partnership with Malcolm Wilson and M-Sport in 1997. The Focus RS WRC 06 was developed from concept to reality in record time by M-Sport and specialist engineers in Ford TeamRS, the company’s in-house performance car and motorsport division. The entire project was overseen by Christian Loriaux, M-Sport’s Technical Director.

“This Championship victory is the result of a tremendous team effort, and everyone at Ford is proud of what the car and the team has achieved this year,” said John Fleming, President and CEO of Ford of Europe. “To secure the manufacturers’ title in our first year of running with an all-new WRC car is more than we had dared hope for, and I would like to pay tribute to everyone involved with the BP-Ford World Rally team.”

Louisville, KY October 16, 2006 - For the second year in a row, defending champions Scott Owens and Kyle Witherspoon of Edge Audio dominated the competition at the dB Drag World Finals in Louiville, Kentucky this past weekend.  Both of their vehicles, fully equipped with Pioneer Premier® SPL subwoofers, amplifiers and headunits, were crowned the loudest vehicles in the world, within their categories.  Owen’s 2002 F-250, which competes in the Extreme 5+ class, posted a sound pressure level (SPL) of 178.3 dB while Witherspoon’s 2004 Scion xB in the Extreme 2 category produced an SPL of 176.4 dB.

“The competition keeps getting tougher, but Pioneer continues to produce products that can withstand and deliver the higher pressure levels,” said Scott Owens, competitor and owner of Edge Audio. “The Pioneer subwoofers and amplifiers surpass every torture test we put them through, especially in the death match competition.  Anyone who’s serious about getting into this sport and hopes to win needs to compete with Pioneer gear.”

ALTON, Va. (October 7, 2006) – It was an up-and-down day for Jack Roush, Jr. and the Rehagen Racing team during the Wheel Enhancement GS Enduro presented by EMC Mechanical at the 3.27-mile Virginia International Raceway.

Under very cool and overcast conditions, which ultimately turned into a heavy rain, the team began the six-hour race near the back of the field, ran as high as ninth place, but by the time the checkered flag flew, ended the day in 16th place.

This was the first Grand-Am Cup start for Roush (Livonia, Mich.) who was a co-driver in the No. 59 Ford Mustang with Dean Martin (Westland Mich.) and Ray Mason (Columbus, Ohio), both veterans of sports car competition. The team, with sponsorship from ROUSH Performance, Brandon Ford, Columbus Truck & Equipment and Racer Bargains, competes in the Grand Sport (GS) class, which is the premier division in Grand-Am Cup competition.

LIVONIA, Mich. (October 2, 2006) - Jack Roush, Jr. might just be one of the most versatile drivers in motorsports. The 33-year old has gone from go-karts to drag racing and now sets his sights on the left-and-right turns of the Grand American Road Racing Association.

The son of motorsports legend Jack Roush and a native of Livonia, Mich., Roush is set to be one of three co-drivers in the six-hour season finale at Virginia International Raceway, sharing the driving duties in the No. 59 Rehagen Racing Ford Mustang with Dean Martin (Westland, Mich.) and Ray Mason (Columbus, Ohio). The team, with sponsorship from ROUSH Performance, Brandon Ford, Columbus Truck & Equipment and Racer Bargains, competes in the Grand Sport (GS) class, which is the premier division in Grand-Am Cup competition.

This event will mark Roush’s first start in the Grand-Am Cup series, and he plans to use this race to gather experience and a feel for the competition in anticipation of a full campaign in 2007. The green flag flies on Saturday, October 7 at 3 p.m. (Eastern) with qualifications set for 10:05 a.m. that same day.

“I am really nervous and really excited at the same time about this race” said Roush. “I don’t quite know what to expect but I do know that this (road racing) is something that I have really wanted to do for a while now so this is sort of the fulfillment of a dream.”

McRae rolls it, rights it, misses gold by 0.52 seconds.
Los Angeles – Travis Pastrana and co-driver Christian Edstrom won the first-ever X Games Rally Car Racing gold medal, but Colin McCrae may have stolen away the signature moment from the debut final at The Home Depot Center.

McCrae, who entered Saturday’s “Super Special” ahead of Pastrana by 0.5 second overall, appeared to be headed for the gold as he re-entered the stadium for the final push to the finish line. That’s when the car got loose on McCrae and co-driver Nicky Grist and rolled over. True to his reputation as a rally car racing legend, McCrae didn’t miss a beat, kept his foot on the pedal, and when the car landed back on its tires gunned to a silver medal finish – missing gold by just 0.52 seconds.

On the afternoon of the 19 June, 1966, as the hands on the famous clock at the end of the Le Mans pit wall crept towards 4pm, three Ford GT40s swept through the circuit’s final corner towards the finish. With their headlamp beams reflecting off the rain-soaked tarmac, they closed ranks to complete the race only feet apart.

The crowd roared, the chequered flag waved and in the stand above the pits Henry Ford II savoured the most famous motor racing victory in the history of the company his grandfather had started 63 years earlier. The mighty Ferrari team with its great Le Mans record had been comprehensively beaten. It was one of the proudest moments in Ford’s long motor sport history.

The route to victory

It had been a long, hard journey to victory - much longer than the mere 24 hours of the race. Three years earlier, Enzo Ferrari had quietly investigated selling his business to Ford, which had wanted to add high performance lustre to its public image. The deal fell through and Ford’s response was to set up a special vehicles department to develop its own high performance cars for road and racetrack.

The Snowbanks of Sweden
The first win for the new version spec C IMPREZA was in the hands of Swedish hotshoe Patrik Flodin, when he trounced the competition on the Bergslagsrally in his native Sweden on January 13th. His victory in the sub-zero temperatures was a warning to rivals that the all-new machine was a continuation of the prowess of its predecessor, the 2005 spec C

Desert Storm
Two weeks later, the new car - instantly recognizable with its revised front grille, totally dominated the opening round of the Middle East Rally Championship - the UAE International Rally. Reigning MERC champion (and regular PCWRC competitor) Nasser Saleh al Attiyah took a convincing win ahead of a brace of Imprezas for an auspicious 1-2 podium finish for the new car. Nasser’s winning margin was equally impressive, the Qatari driver crossing the line over three and a half minutes ahead of his nearest rival.

VALENCIA, CA (April 6, 2006) - Easy Street Motorsports (ESX) announces a new entry in the highly competitive SCCA Pro Racing SPEED World Challenge GT field, with the team making its debut at the famed Long
Beach Grand Prix, held April 7-9. Coverage of the one-hour SPEED GT race will be shown on SPEED Channel, Sun., April 16, at 2 p.m. EST.

ESX Owner Ali Afshar said, “We’ve seen much success with the Subaru Impreza WRX STi winning 10 NHRA Championship ‘Wally’s’, and we look forward to taking ESX and Subaru into battle against the world’s best in the SPEED GT series.”

Managed and engineered by Indycar and Sportscar veteran Marshall Pruett,
the ESX team will look to capitalize on its success with the Impreza WRX
STi last December, placing third overall in the world’s longest
endurance race, the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. Lead driver of the 25-hr.
race and Subaru road racing veteran Gary Sheehan has been chosen to race
and develop the ESX STi in 2006.

This edition of Group N Journal is the first in a series of articles where we follow the British-based Autosportif team’s venture into endurance racing at one of the world’s most renowned circuits, the Nurburgring. The squad is preparing to contest all six rounds of the 2006 VLN BFGoodrich Langstrecken Meisterschaft (long-distance championship), each event a four-hour race at the famously twisty track. These ‘short’ races should provide valuable information for the jewel in the crown, June’s 24-hours of the Nurburgring.

Renowned around the world as one of the greatest ever icons in rallying, the Subaru IMPREZA needs no introduction when it comes to the sport it has featured so strongly in since its introduction over 12 years ago.

For all its success however, one area the Impreza hasn’t ventured into in any major way is tarmac-based endurance racing - until now. Enter Martyn Spurrell and his preparation firm, Autosportif. After many years working at Prodrive, Martyn set up his own SUBARU specialist operation in 1994. Since then, he and his staff have prepared numerous SUBARU rally cars for customers throughout the U.K. and Europe - and as far away as Canada. The company’s success list reads like a who’s who of national championship-level rallying.

Maintaining a consistent and incredibly quick pace over the course of the three days, reigning PCWRC champion Toshi Arai was uncatchable on the rock-strewn roads of Mexico, taking his first win of the season by 48.9 seconds, but was challenged all the way by a hard-charging Nasser Saleh al Attiyah.

The only driver with any realistic chance of coming close to the Japanese was last year’s second place finisher in the championship, Al Attiyah showing pace that belied his experience in the PCWRC.

Of the other STI-equipped runners in the Production Car championship, only Jari Matti Latvala finished out of the points, a result of his previous woes and having to run under SupeRally for 10 of the event’s 17 stages. He ended up just out of the points in ninth place.

The story reads like a blockbuster: Current ‘Rally Championship of Russia’ champion Sergei Uspensky and co-driver Dimitri Yerenev start new season with two perfect results from two rounds. A little research reveals just how successful the URT (Uspensky Rally Tecnica) team boss has been over the years: five-times Russian rally champions, with twelve titles in total across various racing disciplines.

The Rally Championship of Russia is still young, rallying having been outlawed during Soviet times as an extravagance. In the years since the demise of the Soviet Union, motor sport enthusiasts have cropped up across the vast landmass, and rallying is the sport of choice for a rapidly growing segment of Russians.

Growth in the series can be seen wherever one looks: In the ten years since its inauguration, the championship is glowing big siries with plenty of entrants. Of that total, Subaru has gained huge popularity among competitors in Russia over the last few years, going from a 25% share of entrants’ cars three years to a roughly even split two years ago. More growth last season too; and this season, approximately 60% of entrants are running SUBARU machinery.

In contrast to last year’s event where a dearth of snow meant competitors were driving on what appeared to be gravel stages rather than the white stuff, 2006 was perfect in terms of providing the right conditions for a snow event. Until crews ran the second pass over the stages…

With the large number of entrants at last weekend’s event (67 in total, of which 29 were Group N cars) - coupled with the fact that competitors had to run many of the tests twice, the roads became deeply rutted. This can be a real problem as coming out of the ruts, or ‘tram rails’ as they’re commonly called, means a car loses all directional control. We saw this happen to a number of WR cars on the notorious SS3 of leg one.

This year the Swedish Rally is not part of the Production Car WRC. However, Subaru was well represented in the Group N category with no fewer than 11 IMPREZAs dotted throughout the entry list.

CHERRY HILL, N.J., Feb. 1 — Subaru Rally Team USA debuted its new 2006 Impreza WRX STI Open Class rally cars for the very first time at Round 1 of the Rally America Championship, the Sno*Drift Rally in Atlanta, MI. Team drivers Travis Pastrana and Ken Block placed an impressive second and fourth place and netted five fastest stage times each in the debut rally, with Pastrana narrowly missing victory after stopping to help his teammate.

Team Subaru rolled out the new Impreza WRX STI rally cars for the first time during Thursday Practice. The cars were immediately quick in both practice and Friday’s Shakedown session. The newly branded SRT USA (Subaru Rally Team USA) WRX STIs are based on 2006 MY Impreza WRX STI road cars.

The Sno*Drift rally is traditionally a cold weather event with high snow banks lining icy, snow-covered roads. This year participants encountered unseasonably warm temperatures with both event days in the high 40s combined with sunny weather and light to moderate wind gusts. The conditions meant inconsistent road conditions with melting slush in certain corners and slick icy patches in others.

CHERRY HILL, N.J., Dec. 1, 2005—Subaru of America, Inc. today announced it has signed Supercross and Motorcross Champion, multi-time X Games gold medalist, and up-and-coming rally star Travis Pastrana to lead Subaru Rally Team USA (SRT USA). Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, Travis Pastrana will challenge for the title in the Rally America National Championship piloting his world-class 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX.

“Subaru has a strong heritage and successful history in rally racing - winning numerous manufacturers’ and drivers’ titles in the World Rally Championship (WRC),” said Rick Crosson, vice president of marketing, Subaru of America, Inc. “Travis Pastrana is a good fit for the Subaru brand with his natural driving ability, pioneering spirit, and will to win. We are confident that his participation in the Rally America National Championship will attract new fans to the sport, further enhancing its popularity in the U.S.”

This is posted on ESX’s site:

Hailing from Southern California where Performance and Image are king, this Limited Edition Subaru Package takes both of those characteristics and turns up the volume.

Mirroring the World Famous Subaru/ESX race cars, the ESX/STi is a limited edition, with only a total of 40 units to be built in 2006.

Based on the dynamic All Wheel Drive 2006 Subaru STi, the ESX enhancements accentuate an already outstanding vehicle.