It seems that Tanner Foust was born to go sideways. Having forged a reputation in Formula Drift and supplied the driving skills for one of those fast and spurious films, Foust decided to try his hand at rallying. Which makes him one of the few Americans who have even heard of possibly the most exciting form of motorsport ever, let alone attempted to compete in it.
Fans of the X Games know about rallying to some degree. The organizers have done well in making it more TV-friendly. It's not what European enthusiasts are accustomed to-to them, rallying stages take place in the open, through thick forests or over mountains covered in ice and snow, not in little stadiums in sunny Southern California-but it's still fun and offers plenty of jumps and slides. Before Foust took the X Games Rally Gold Medal in 2007, there were only two other American names of any note: Travis Pastrana and Ken Block. The year before, Pastrana beat a rally legend-the late, great Colin McRae. McRae rolled his car in spectacular fashion, as befits someone with the nickname McCrash. And there was still only a fraction of a second separating the two.
Foust finished Fourth in the '07 Rally America series and, at the time of writing, is deep in the Top 10 of the '08 season. In many ways, he has this '07 Subaru Impreza STI to thank, plus the tireless work of Darren Papworth, a 41-year-old Brit who is the rally team technical director and chief engineer of Syms Racing, Europe. As if we needed any further proof of our shrinking world, here's an American driver piloting a Japanese car, built in (of all places) Belgium by a Brit. Not the best of both worlds-the best of all.
Some background: Syms is a professional motorsport team with over 30 years experience building cars; 10 of those involving Imprezas. Papworth started as an apprentice mechanic 24 years ago, inspired to get into motorsport because of the thrill of it all and the influence of his father. When the Impreza entered his world-one of the staple machines in rallying, along with the mighty Mitsubishi Lancer EVO-it rocked it in a big way.
He has owned (or still owns) all manner of Imprezas-from race versions to street-legal STIs-including one each from the past three consecutive years. He knows his way around a Subaru just as much as anyone from Subaru. Which is just as well, because the build on this car started in November 2006, and ended just one month later, as the deadline for the '07 Rally America season was looming.
This was the machine's sole purpose: competition. No fancy stereo or pimped-out wheels. This is how a team with years of expertise takes a car and makes it into a winner.
There is no body kit, just some weight-saving measures in the form of a Seibon carbon-fiber hoodscoop and rear doors, with plexiglas replacing the rear glass. Wheels and tires obviously depend on what surface any given rally stage will take place on (snow, ice, mud, tarmac, gravel), but the baseline combination consists of 15x6 Italian EVO Corse alloys rolling on 215/70/15 Yokohama X977 rubber-tires supplied exclusively to rallying teams.
Behind them are tried-and-trusted AP Racing brakes with 11.6-inch front rotors and 11.2-inch rears, operated via trusty Goodridge stainless steel braided lines. They don't need to possess the stopping power of something like a time attack car; rallying is more about keeping the momentum, shifting the car's weight, being smooth and judicious with driver inputs. Being the '07 Formula Drift champion, Foust understands this perfectly.