By David Gee

It's a classis, time-tested motorsports story. Take a rookie driver, in this case, Brian Deegan, and pair them with the grizzled, experienced crew chief, Graham Evans specifically, who knows all the ins and outs of the sport, and hope for some magic.

This story has a bit of a twist though. Deegan, fresh from Team O'Neill Rally School for his first rally drive, isn't exactly a newcomer to the world of extreme sports.

Many of you may know him as a freestyle motocross rider and a founding member of the “Metal Mulisha.” Deegan was the first ever to do a 360 in competition; he named the trick the "Mulisha Twist." He is also the most decorated freestyle motocross rider in X Games history and is the only rider to compete in at least one event in every X Games since its inception.

“I originally got started in four-wheel racing because I kept breaking bones and almost died about three different times,” said Deegan, who is third in points overall as an owner/driver of the Rockstar/Metal Mulisha/Lucas Oil Team in the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series. “I watched Travis Pastrana in X Games and was intrigued about the whole rallying thing. So when Tanner Foust couldn't come to STPR because of a Formula Drift event, we put this deal together with Tanner's regular co-driver Chrissie Beavis alongside me and Graham Evans as crew chief. I'm anxious to see how we'll do.”

"I'm anxious as well," said Evans, who has won this event as crew chief twice and been on the podium five times. "I'll be able to put that experience to use with our debuting driver and I know the situation here with these roads well. It looks like the roads are going to be dry and that’s not a good thing for this event. The dust tends to hang in the air a long time and it’s an awfully fast event to be driving into a dust cloud. But we’ll have the car ready and see how it goes."

”Of course I want to do good,” continued Deegan, “but mainly I don't want to crash the car, ‘cause that would cost me a bunch of money!”

Wicked crashes are nothing new to Deegan. In 2004, at the Winter X Games, he went down and broke his leg and both wrists. And during a 2005 taping of MTV's Viva La Bam Deegan under-rotated a back-flip and the handle bars hit hard in his mid-section. He lost a kidney, lacerated his spleen, and lost a significant amount of blood. He now has a long scar down his stomach, spanning almost his entire abdomen, as a result of the accident.

When Deegan attended the Team O'Neil Rally School it wasn't bones or vital organ they were worried about breaking though, it was old habits. Deegan had to begin the process of learning left-foot breaking, setting up for the turns early, setting up for two or three turns simultaneously, and of course how to speak the specific language of Jemba notes and rallying.

“I didn't know what to expect at the school really, but it brought me back to the basics of driving,” stated Deegan. “It's going to be a little intimidating though going 100 miles per hour through the woods at STPR.”

His crew chief's advice wouldn't be to “go through the woods” at all, but rather to keep it on the road, though it seems as if sometimes trees even sprout up there as well.

“The trees do come into play,” said Evans somewhat understatedly this time. “You have the bank on one side of the roads and these huge trees on the other. If you make contact with one of those you're looking at significant damage or worse. You must stay in the middle of the road in this event.”

Deegan thinks he has a good headstart for his first Rally America rally this weekend, with his CORR Racing experience.

“I know rallying is something to be learned,” Deegan opined. But I know what it feels like to jump 100 feet or more, and pitch it. ‘Feeling it' is half the battle. Just being strapped in and having the radio and my co-driver in one ear will help my frame of mind though.”

Deegan says he also has to learn how not to be hard on the car, with shifting and so forth, and that his primary goal is to just finish the race.

This 33rd running of the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, may be slightly different than the early days. This event is still a fast one, particularly if the roads get some moisture on them and turn freeway hard and smooth. But some special stages have been added that are tight and rough and hard on cars according to some competitors. Just don't say some stages at STPR are “rough” to Graham Evans though, unless you want to get into a spirited discussion.

“I hear that from guys all the time now and it's just not true. I mean c'mon, there are some rough spots but this isn't anything like a Greece where the road is made of cobblestones, or Cyprus or Kenya. Those are probably five times worse than anything that STPR will dish out. There's no reason for a car to come out of those stages at STPR with problems.”

Last year at STPR there were some cars that had problems, notably the new Subaru rides of Travis Pastrana and Ken Block that made their debut at STPR in 2008 and both DNF'd with mechanical issues. But Evans doesn't buy the blanket statement that there will be “lots of attrition” this year.

“They have reconnaissance. Maybe eight or ten percent of that one special stage is rough. We'll make some adjustments to ride height but that's it. There are some tight and twisty spots and the road climbs a bit, and engine temperatures tend to rise with it, but that's not such a big deal. I don't expect much attrition.”

You should expect some friendly, spirited Super Production competition though between Brian Deegan and his former fellow freestyle motocross competitor Dave Mira.

“At first I didn't know I would be competing against Mirra in the SP Class,” said Deegan excitedly. “That is what's so cool with four-wheel racing! People from all sorts of different backgrounds and experience levels can all be out there competing against each other on the same field. I can't wait to get going.”