The Rally America National Championship has announced that rally car racing will be back for X-Games 16 and is actually a huge hit for the fans.
With ticket sales soaring and television ratings still climbing, the boys from the national championship have been invited back to put on a show. There will be twelve drivers who will be chosen by very specific criteria. Three of the participants have already been selected with last year’s medalist getting the call. Kenny Brack, Travis Pastrana, and Tanner Foust have been selected as the first invitational athletes for this year’s event. The selection is then broken down into two other criteria that must be met in order to get an invite.
1. The top four drivers in the Rally America national championship point standings as of 8 June 2010 will be invited. Travis Pastrana, Antoine L’Estage, William Bacon and Andrew Comrie-Picard would be the choices if the selection was today. Wait you say…Travis was already invited…in that case, Travis’s bid would then be moved to an at large bid for someone else. What is an at large bid you ask?
2. At large bid: An at large bid will is an entry into the X-Games as decided by the Rally America National Championship. The entry does not HAVE to be a Rally America driver. If we remember back to last year, Patrik Sandell came over from the WRC to compete in the STPR event in hopes of getting an X-Games invite. He failed to do it however because of mechanical failure around four kilometers into the first stage. There will be five at large bids at a minimum and probably six this year as the points leader already has an invite. Rally America Super Production and 2WD class cars can make the event if they are in the top four in overall points. Seeing as that is highly unlikely, they do receive preference in the selection process.
If for some reason a driver who satisfies one of the first two criteria decides to reject the invitation, that is then turned into an at large bid as well. That being said, it is not very easy to get picked up for the X-Games.
The X-Games has taken rally out of its comfort zone in regards to proper stages, but it is a new environment that attracts fans and puts on one hell of a show. Last year’s event was awesome when Kenny Brack came back from a serious IndyCar crash to take victory. What makes it even more exciting was the fact that Kenny had never been in a rally car previous to that event. The event does great things for rally in the US and will continue to be a highlight in the X-Games for years to come as the likes of Ken Block venture abroad and draw even more attention to it.