Automotive ADD: Why Red Bull Global Rallycross might save motorsport

Jonathan M. GitlinNelson Piquet Jr takes me for a ride in his Global Rallycross Ford Fiesta.

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WASHINGTON, DC—Red Bull Global Rallycross (GRC) paid its annual visit to the nation's capital this past weekend. As a form of racing, rallycross has been doing something few other series have managed in recent years—it's growing new fans and appealing to kids who, by and large, are more interested in getting the latest phone than a driver's license. With that in mind, we spent a couple of days at RFK Stadium watching the action and talking to some of the drivers to find out what makes this flavor of the sport so successful.

A brief primer: the cars all start life as regular production cars—Volkswagen Beetles, Ford Fiestas, and so on. They're eventually stripped down and highly modified. Highly turbocharged two-liter engines pump out more than 600hp, driving all four wheels. The tracks are a mix of tarmac and gravel and include a dramatic jump over a dirt ramp. And the races are fast and furious, a series of short heats with plenty of opportunity for door-banging and paint-trading.

This year, Andretti Autosport's Tanner Foust and Scott Speed have been the men to beat, taking the majority of the wins so far in their VW Beetles. We got to ask both drivers what makes GRC a hit. "The secret is two-fold," Foust said. The racer made his name in Formula Drift, then the X-Games, before competing in rallycross first in Europe and then here in the US. By now, you might also recognize him from Top Gear America.

"We started the sport in the US in the X-Games, and that naturally has a young demographic. The players in the sport—especially in the beginning—were names like [Travis] Pastrana, Bucky [Lasek], and Ken [Block] and Dave Mirra, who were all subscribing to the idea that 'with age comes a cage; and they'd take their two-wheel adventures into four wheels," he told Ars. "And then there's the short racing format. When everything's narrowed down to three minutes, you don't have to pay attention that long—they call it motorsport for people with ADD. It has all the sweet spots. You have a drag racing launch with incredibly fast cars, you have jumps, you have drifting and sliding through the corners, you have cars that can pull 2Gs in the corners if they need to. And you have unique venues. There's a lot of pros for a young crowd."

His teammate Scott Speed—who has raced in Formula 1 and Formula E—concurs. "It's short races, it's actually entertaining, and the content that's generated here is unrivaled," he said. "The YouTube videos we can make or the pictures that come out from these races—you take a picture of an F1 car on track and it looks like it's standing still. You take a picture of my Beetle coming sideways over the top of the jump and it looks fast, it demonstrates that speed. I love it. It's super fun to drive, the cars are incredible to be able to go around corners with dirt and 70-foot jumps."

Even a recent conversation with former IndyCar driver Alex Lloyd turned to talk of GRC when discussing the future of motorsports. "I think you need to do something radical, and appease the non-purists and the purists at the same time. The closest that we come from a sport that I can see catching on is Global RallyCross," Lloyd said. "People want that nature of things happening quickly, it's aggressive, there's jumping, there's action, and then it ends. And then a little bit later there'll be another heat going on. I think it's that mentality that specifically America wants. Look at football—it's a very long game but there's lots of little segments of excitement and then it stops. And then it's excitement and then it stops. I think racing can learn something by doing things like heat races."

Listing image by Elle Cayabyab Gitlin