Subiesport Magazine - November 2008 - (Page 55)

SHOWS largely unharmed, and the battered Evo driven away from the scene, the roar of the crowd made it clear who was up next. Pastrana would finally race, and Sarasin had the misfortune of being in the lane next to him. It didn’t take long for Pastrana to stamp his authority on a comparatively uneventful race, and the reigning Rally America champion was through to the semifinals. There was one quarterfinal round left, a tight battle between Block and Johnson that would see Block go through by less than a second – but not before he’d again gone long on the jump, landing nosefirst into the dirt in a brutal impact that would be a deciding factor in the end result. Competing in his first X Games, Johnson could be pleased with his final position. “There’s a lot of stuff we learned this weekend,” he said. “We weren’t even positive that we were coming here, for budget reasons, only three weeks ago … to be where we were with Ken … you could measure our success and say that it turned out quite well.” Into the semifinals, then, and it promised to be an X Games classic, with Mirra going up against Foust and Pastrana taking on Block. Amazingly, Mirra’s pit crew had managed to repair the suspension to the point where it would steer again. For a moment the BMX legend looked to have the advantage, with Foust making a rare mistake, flying very long over the jump and landing flat but hard. Mirra, however, made the exact same mistake – except that he ended up buried in the barriers at the bottom of the stadium exit. It seemed that Comrie-Picard’s flip had spooked the remaining drivers, with several taking the jump at a far faster speed than was necessary, and most of them suffering for it. Unfortunately, the big showdown between Block and Pastrana, the battle of the ’08 STI, was not to be. When the flag dropped, Block’s car was left standing. He was unable to get it going, and forfeited the win to a confused Pastrana. A bitterly disappointed Block explained what happened. “I landed really hard and broke the ra- diator on the run before … so they ripped out the radiator and I was going to run without a radiator. That’s all they could do. As I was getting in the car, they said, ‘If you get up there and they have a delay, shut the engine off.’ So, I got in, the car would barely start. It didn’t start until I was almost DQ’d, so it got started, pulled over there, and my worst nightmare happened – they said [holds up three fingers] ‘three minutes.’ So I could have left the engine on and it could have blown up on the line because it would SUBIESPORT MAGAZINE 55

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Subiesport Magazine - November 2008

Subiesport Magazine - November 2008 Contents Editor Letters Readers’ Rides New Products Subaru News 2009 WRX Test Drive Back on Easy Street Brothers in Boost Treasure Island ESPN X Games 14 Subiefest 3 Subie Extravaganza WWJCD WRC Rally Finland WRC Rally Deutschland Rally America: Ojibwe Forest Rally America: Colorado Where to buy Subiesport Orange Invasion - Europe 2007 STI Intake Test Dreadnought Widebody Install p2 Ad Directory Spotted!

Subiesport Magazine - November 2008

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