Kenny Brack, the 1999 Indianapolis 500 winner, driving the Olsbergs Motorsport Evolution Ford Fiesta, captured the gold medal in Sunday’s X Games Rally Competition, defeating 2008 champion Travis Pastrana in the Super Special Rally Final. Brack’s teammate, Tanner Foust, captured the bronze medal in his Rockstar energy drink-backed Fiesta, narrowly losing a thrilling semi-final match-up with Brack. Brian Deegan, the motocross star turned rally racer, finished fourth overall in a third Fiesta when he lost a turbo hose during a semi-final match-up with Pastrana.
“The Olsbergs Fiesta was a great car and this victory is the result of a lot of hard work by the team,” said Brack, who became the first invited driver to the X Games rally competition to win. “The Fiesta is a great little car – very fast, especially on tarmac. The whole package was fantastic. We ran a single set of BFGoodrich tires today and never had any problem.”
Brack admitted his day almost ended before it began.
“I almost destroyed the car in practice this morning, because I never jumped the jumps before and because it is a different technique,” he related. “I landed on the nose and ripped the roll bar and everything off of the car. We managed to regroup and the crew worked hard to get it ready for the elimination rounds. After that first problem, the jumps all went fine. You can dream about something like this, but the reality is often different. But today, everything fell our way.”
Brack, who has been retired from competitive racing after the 2005 Indy 500, drove the 450-horsepower Olsbergs MSE Fiesta brilliantly, clinching the gold when his competition, Pastrana, spun wide and clipped the wall in the finale. Brack’s toughest competition came in the semi-final when he raced neck and neck with his teammate Foust. Brack edged Foust when the rally and drifting ace suffered a miscue on course.
“The Fiesta was running good and unfortunately Kenny and I got stuck up against each other in the semi-finals, so it was Fiesta vs. Fiesta,” said Foust, who described the Fiesta as “an angry little beast” earlier in the week. “Ford had three of the final four, which shows the strength of the car. I was a little slow against Kenny on the first half of the track, but on the second half I made it up and I think I may have passed him a little bit.
“Then, coming around the fountain, a barrier had moved in the competition and I just made an error and I drove up basically his lane instead of mine, and I had to do a 180 and come back. That cost me at least four or five seconds and Kenny took it. He is an amazing driver and Kenny has such a big background and he deserves it. Best of all, Ford has 1 and 3 at the X Games and that is a lot of hardware.”