Red Bull Global Rallycross: Welcome to Canada

 Photo Credit: Larry Chen/Red Bull Content Pool

By Emily Chung

In celebration of Canada 150, the Red Bull Global Rally Cross (GRC) held its inaugural Canadian race in Ottawa June 17 and 18. The doubleheader featured a brand new track built one week before the event at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.

While I’ve been to a few motorsport events, I’ve never followed the Global Rallycross before. When the opportunity came from BFGoodrich to attend the event, and have some time with Canadian-born North American Rally Champ and X-Games medalist Andrew Comrie-Picard (ACP) walking us through the race, I decided to take my 9-year-old son and spend the day in our nation’s capital.

There are so many things that make the Global Rallycross unique. It is a sprint race with 10 laps and the 600-horsepower supercars go from 0 to 100kms in under 2 seconds! These supercars have 600lb-ft of torque and are designed to race for approximately 6 minutes. It’s not a long race at all. Another distinct feature of the GRC is the varied terrain that the track presents. As ACP explains, the rally race is meant to capture the feel that you could race on any surface. Drivers race on a combination of pavement, dirt, straightaways, hairpins, and the series’ signature 70-foot jump. If that’s not enough of a challenge, the track also presents a joker lap where each driver must take once during the race. More on the joker lap in a bit.

Photo Credit: Larry Chen/Red Bull Content Pool

Another thing to note about the GRC is that all vehicles use the same tires – BFGoodrich’s g-Force RC02. These are custom-made non-DOT race tires. My 9-year-old asked ACP if the tires could be used on the street and sadly for my son, that was a no. For the supercars, they’re allotted 12 tires per round. There’s one thing to be said about all the vehicles using the same tire – it takes away some of the variable in terms of equipment performance and tests the driver’s true ability to race. BFGoodrich travels to each race location and sets up shop with engineers and technicians on hand to support the teams.

The g-Force RC02 was developed to handle the supercar’s launch while providing a bite on pavement and lateral traction when cornering on dirt surfaces. If the track is wet, the teams can also cut the tire tread to provide more traction.

Don’t forget that 70-foot jump, the tires also need to have sidewalls sturdy enough to absorb the landing. Driver abuse on those tires, really. And BFGoodrich’s g-Force RC02 takes it all in stride. The technology that is developed for these races are transferred to their g-Force passenger and performance tires. While more manufacturers are adding ‘performance’ features in their vehicles, I’m happy to see that the tire industry is keeping up.

The GRC has two vehicle classes: lites and supercars. What any new spectator will notice in the supercars is that they look just like regular vehicles: Honda Civic, Ford Fiesta, Volkswagen Beetle, and Subaru WRX STI. Of course, these have been severely modified and they their front headlights have been replaced by stickers… but it’s nice to dream that your average Civic could do what these drivers do on the track.

Patrik Sandell & Andrew Comrie-Picard

Spending some time with ACP, he explained how critical the start position is as it’s very hard to pass another supercar during the race.  As for the joker lap, usually it’s a shortcut and on the first day of the doubleheader it was raced that way. However, on the second day, the joker lap was the longer route. ACP talked about the strategy for the joker lap and noted that if you’re in the lead, you’d likely want to take the longer joker lap towards the end of the race. That way, you would try to increase your lead early on and hope that you were far out enough to afford the long joker lap.

It was a great experience and I have much more appreciation for the race now. The paddock areas and crew are quite low-key, giving fans young and old an opportunity to see the cars up close and speak to the teams. Steve Arpin, the sole Canadian racer, won Saturday’s event – what a great way to say Happy Canada 150, eh? At the time of writing, he is #2 in the series. The Red Bull Global Rallycross continues on into the fall season throughout the US.

Photo Credit: Larry Chen/Red Bull Content Pool