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Drone On

Tanner Foust takes an imaginary friend – actually foe – along with him in his rally drives

By David Gee

Rallying and video games – and video gamers – have been good friends now for nearly a decade. The relationship began when Colin McRae Rally was released for the PC and PlayStation platforms in late 1998 in the United Kingdom and in early 2000 in the United States.
The original game featured real cars and drivers from the 1998 World Rally Championship, and the late, great rally champion Colin McRae's now familiar blue Subaru was featured on the game's cover.
There are plenty of gamers who have never been to a real rally in person, but who were nevertheless introduced to the sport via video. And there are plenty of people in the rally community – both fans and competitors – who satisfy their need for speed in-between events through their various rally games.
The success of the Colin McRae Rally games has resulted in some six world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition. The records include, "Fastest Physics Engine in a Racing Game," “Most Camera Views in a Racing Game," and “Most Complex Audio in a Racing Game.”

Tanner Foust had the chance to meet – and train with – Colin McRae when the great Scot came over in August, 2006, to compete for Subaru in the first live network televised American rally in Los Angeles as part of the X-Games. In what has become a legendary performance, McRae rolled the car on the next-to-last corner after landing awkwardly from a jump, which damaged the front bumper and left front tire. Despite this miscue, McRae's time was only 0.13 seconds slower than that of eventual winner Travis Pastrana.

“I was part of that factory Subaru effort with Travis and Ken Block and Colin McRae at X Games in 2006,” reminisces Foust. “In fact, another rally legend, John Buffum, was working with all of us. John and I talked to each other and kept in contact occasionally since that time and I certainly have always respected his accomplishments, his competitiveness and his businesses sense.”

That respect turned into a true business relationship for the 2009 Rally America championship season as Foust takes his Rockstar Energy Drink sponsorship to Buffum’s Libra Racing. After an impressive second-place finish in an older car at the season-opening Sno*Drift event, Foust will be behind the wheel of a new Mitsubishi Lancer Evo the rest of the way.

“When I was trying to put together a program for this year John called out of the blue and said he had an opportunity and we kind of pieced it together from there.”

I asked Foust if his sponsor cared what marque of car their logo was draped on.

“Rockstar Energy Drink, my main sponsor, is kind of an enlightened company in that they recognize that the athletes competing in various extreme sports have just as much motivation to win as they do. So they took my advice that we could be competitive and they have been a great partner. Certainly I have pressure on me to perform and deliver results but that’s okay.”

And what has Buffum, the most successful U.S. rally driver ever, with 11 national titles and 117 national championship event wins to his credit, been like to work with?

“John calls me to tell me to call him more often. He says, ‘C’mon, you’re the driver, tell me what you need.’ But I have other programs going, and when you have someone as competent as John on the other end, all I really need to do, and all I really want to do, is show up and drive. That’s my goal, to have a program where I can concentrate on sitting behind the steering wheel instead of worrying about all of the other business associated with a motorsports team.”

Speaking of business, with the downturn in the economy, the business side of motorsports has become a rockier road that continues to claim victims from NASCAR on down.

“Last year we weren’t able to complete the entire season and this year we want to be there at the end and make those championship points count for something,” said Foust.

“I think rally racing in this country has as much chance to succeed as it ever has. X Games has been the halo event of course from a marketing perspective, and the television package overall could be a little firmer, but I think there is a tremendous amount of commitment shown to the sport from the organizers at Rally America to the local rally organizing level and also by the teams. Strangely, even in this challenging economic time, there seems to be more interest from the manufacturer’s standpoint than there has been in the recent past so that’s a positive development.”

As Foust pointed out, rallying is also still very much a grassroots sport where the vast majority of teams are self-funded and they pay for their efforts simply out of passion. Some members of the rally competition community have been hit by the downturn in their day jobs and others simply haven’t.

Foust’s day job is driving and he has been able to carve out a career for himself in drifting (he was the 2007 and 2008 Formula Drift Pro Drift champion), rallying (where he was the 2007 X Games gold medalist and the runner-up in 2008) the movies (he has been a stunt driver in such films as The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and The Dukes of Hazzard) and has a TV career going with NBC’s Top Gear USA and other speed-themed and inspired shows.

It’s clear though he has a special fondness for rally.

“Rally racing has such a pure form of competition to it, where as drifting and some of the other sorts of things I do, has some degree of subjectivity to it. You might be do the exact same drifting run 10 times and get 8 different results. There is an absoluteness to rallying and of course that comes in the form of the clock. Rally racing is such an interesting, interesting sport because you head out all alone into the woods, with just your-co-driver and your car, you’re not side by side with anyone, but you have this visual, or at least I do, of how fast the drivers in front of you are going through every corner.”

This is getting good. I’ve never heard a rally driver describe the experience quite like Foust is doing and he’s on a roll.

“My favorite starting position on the road is second. It may not be the quickest necessarily, but I love to see the tracks of the driver in front of me. At Sno*Drift for example, I watched every single corner that Travis Pastrana did for the entire rally. I knew exactly where I came out of the corner a little bit faster than him, and I knew exactly where he came out a little faster than I did. And I could gauge his level of commitment very easily corner by corner, stage by stage, simply by watching his tracks and looking at the pock marks on the snowbanks.”

Now, if you were wondering where I was going with those video game factoids at the beginning of this piece, well, now I’m going to tie it all together here at the end. Because Tanner Foust is going to describe how he ties gaming and rallying together in a most unique way.

“I think of it almost like a video game where you track and visualize how fast the drone car is going next to you…sometimes you pull ahead of it and other times it’s ahead of you…but it’s a great internal battle that you have going on between you and this imaginary driver and car. That’s a really interesting thing when you’re going a hundred miles an hour through the woods!”