There's Nothing Like Rallying in a Subaru WRX at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

• The forest rally stage at the Goodwood Festival of Speed is short but leaves a lasting impression.
• I rode along with four-time Rally America champion Travis Pastrana.
• The car? Subaru's new WRX ARA25 rally machine.

The WRX goes rallying

Subaru was my host for this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed, and I got to experience the company's new WRX ARA25 rally car in the best way possible: riding along with rally champ Travis Pastrana.

The ARA25 has a stock WRX chassis, but the rest is pretty much built from scratch. There's still a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine under the hood, but it's been turbocharged to an inch of its life and runs 22 psi of boost. That bumps output up to 320 horsepower and 380 lb-ft of torque, which runs through a six-speed sequential gearbox — think of it as a manual/automatic combo. The car's wheels are smaller than you might think, at just 15 inches, but that's to give the tires plenty of sidewall to help absorb all of the bumps (and jumps!). Most of the car's body and interior are made of carbon fiber, all in an effort to save weight.

Riding with Travis Pastrana

It was a very hot day (especially by English standards) with temperatures pushing up near 90 degrees Fahrenheit. And because I was with a group of journalists, that meant cycling through race suits after each person got their ride. When it was my turn to go, I zipped up the, uh, damp suit, pretzeled myself through the WRX's roll cage, shook hands with Travis, and we were off. 

Travis started with a quick apology: "I'm sorry we can't really go too fast, it's pretty slick out there and there's no grip." And that's when it occurs to me that we might have different definitions of "fast." The Goodwood rally stage, just like the paved hillclimb, is quite short. Ripping through the whole course takes less than 3 minutes if you're in a modern car. When actually running full out, Pastrana did a run in 2 minutes, 23 seconds.

The countdown board at the start line slowly ticked down, and at around 5, Travis put the WRX in gear and revved the engine up for launch. Simply hearing the noise of a real bona fide rally car from the inside was enough to get my heart racing before we'd even moved an inch, and the volume wouldn't relent until the lap was finished. When the clock hit zero, we rocketed off into the first turn, sliding sideways to get the best line.

One of the stranger things about riding with professional drivers is that many of them love to talk. And that's not a bad thing, except for the fact that they are chatting while driving at a mind-bending pace. At the rally stage, that was compounded by the fact that we were on a very tight course that was extremely slippery, and in some spots, not even wide enough for the car to fit through sideways with trees. It felt akin to speeding through a tunnel on ice with turbo and engine valve sounds pinging around the cabin like a swarm of angry bees.

Travis provided commentary on each turn, how he was approaching each corner, and the course conditions, which I am sure I'd have appreciated if my brain had been able to better process all the madness. In most cases, all I could manage to blurt out was a quick "Yup!" in response. Good job, Brian.

Travis was right, the course had no grip at all with its dusty, hard-packed surface. But sliding the car into and out of the turns was the fastest way to get around, and with the confines being so tight, that meant Travis sometimes needed to actually use the berms (or even the hay bales) that line the route to help bump the rear of the car back into alignment. That all required incredible car control, which, of course, Travis had. I spent a quick part of the ride not even looking at the course but at Travis' hands and feet, and they were all moving rapidly, making steering inputs, shifting or pulling the handbrake to get the WRX's rear to quickly slide around.

This was an absolutely transcendent experience. And for whatever reason, as we crossed the finish line, Travis thanked me for riding along before I had a chance to get out any words. So please, let me take this opportunity to instead thank Travis for driving and Subaru Motorsports America for building this absolutely bonkers machine.

Maybe someday I'll get to drive the rally course myself. All I need is a co-driver. Any volunteers?