We Rode Shotgun With Travis Pastrana At Goodwood

Travis Pastrana turned 41 last fall, and so far, he’s averaged one surgery for every year he’s been alive. His most recent visit to the operating room happened after a BASE-jumping accident during filming for Gymkhana 12 in 2022 that ripped his urethra and broke his pelvis, back, and sacrum in multiple locations. And yet, here he is, three years and thousands of racing miles later, fully rebuilt and revving up a race-prepped Subaru WRX built by the company’s U.S. motorsports arm for the American Rally Association (ARA).

We’re at the Goodwood Festival of Speed waiting on the starting line of the 1.9-mile Forest Rally Stage, and I’m riding shotgun as Travis noses the Subaru to the starting line. The guy who clearly knows how to get himself in predicaments, and my nerves seem to have gotten the message.

OEM-Plus Or Bat-Out-Of-Hell Insanity

For the ARA’s 2025 season, Pastrana is competing in the Limited 4WD class, meaning his Subaru WRX ARA25L makes use of a showroom-fresh Subaru WRX bodyshell and features limited aerodynamic and performance mods. In fact, its 2.4-liter boxer-four engine uses the same turbocharger as stock, although the MoTec engine computer, billet engine block, and rally-spec forged internals allow it to make 315 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque – even with the Limited class’ restrictor plates and boost limits. It’s an astounding machine, and Pastrana and his co-driver Rhiannon Gelsomino are currently leading the so-called L4WD class in the ARA25L.

However, in 2024, Pastrana competed in the ARA’s Open 4WD rally class, for which Vermont SportsCar built the Subaru WRX VT23r – twin to the subject of today’s story, the ARA25 (no L). Although still based on a relatively stock body shell, the Open 4WD car features a seam-welded body-in-white, combined with carbon fiber wheel arch extensions, a massive rear wing, front dive planes, and most importantly, a custom-built Vermont SportsCar 2.0-liter boxer-four engine.

Although making the same power as the less aggressive L4WD car, the ARA25’s unbelievable aerodynamics, longer-travel suspension, and lighter weight mean it attacks rally stages with the kind of ferocity usually reserved for top-tier World Rally Championship Rally1 racers. And while I might have enjoyed seeing what Subaru’s OEM-plus WRX ARA25L could do – particularly as some jetlag- and anxiety-induced jitters set in – Travis wanted to take me down the hill and then back up again in its more aggressive sibling.

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Suited Up And Strapped In

Even during the heatwave that hit Southern England during the Festival of Speed, Nomex racing suits are a must, so I chugged a glass of water and pulled on the thick outerwear. One of the Subaru Motorsports USA team members helped me climb through the roll-cage jungle gym and got me belted into the racing seat. Leaving the front doors open a crack for ventilation, Pastrana fired up the 2.0-liter under the hood and pulled through the grass paddock, spectators gleefully waving at him through the windshield as the high-strung boxer four throbbed through my hearing protection. Every moment we idled, fans would ask him for selfies and share stories of seeing him race in various disciplines at other sporting events, and he brushed off their admiration with humility that belied his genuine star quality at these events.

The countdown timer began. This was Pastrana’s 10th or 11th time down the Forest Rally Stage, and he acknowledged that during his first few practice runs the previous day, he underestimated how truly slick the dry, silty path was. The man practically giggled in recounting his co-driver’s admonishments whenever he carried too much speed into a corner (“She has taught me so much,” he says about Gelsomino). Yet somehow, his cavalier attitude toward overcooking it somehow brought me comfort. His urinary bits have quite literally been put through the shredder, so he knows danger. And nothing he does today is going to be dangerous. The track marshal gives us the go-ahead, and Pastrana puts his boot all the way in it.

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Screams From The Engine, Laughs From Behind The Wheel

Leaping off the starting line with the 2.0-liter boxer-four at full chat, Pastrana punts the WRX VT23r down the main straight past the grandstands. The Forest Rally Stage isn’t very wide at all, and chucking it into the first corner, the car kisses the apex with the front bumper and the exit with the rear. “This surface is so weird,” Pastrana says. “It behaves more like ice than dirt.” I muster up a tepid “wow” in reply, my attention more keen on the driver’s incredibly fast hands than anything else. Through the entire first half of the course, the steering wheel is never pointed straight, the Subaru pirouetting from one corner to the next like a chain following sprockets. There’s one big pothole that’s developed on the course just before the bottom of the hill, and Pastrana shows restraint for the first time. But it’s clear he’s doing so out of sympathy for his machine (and passenger) than for any safety reason.

Past that, we’re on to the barrel at the bottom of the hill, situated on the only paved part of the track. The WRX enters the corner, curls around the barrel on the right, and then rockets away after executing the perfect asphalt donut – it comes out later than most of the racers have either been driving around the obstacle as though it’s an apex or cutting the corner completely, but since Subaru Motorsports USA isn’t actually in the official timed competition, Pastrana decides to put on a show for the crowd at the bottom with his loop-de-loop.

Now heading back up the hill, we tear through the forest, and it feels almost like those old rally videos from the 1980s, with spectators getting peppered with rocks and dust as the rally star clips berms and hay bales on the bleeding edge of sanity. Here comes the jump block, and although it’s only large enough to catch air for 40 feet or so, the temporary weightlessness elicits my first laughter since we got in the car.

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Everything, from Pastrana directing the WRX’s slides to the glee- and dust-ridden faces of the people on the side of the track, is perfect. All forms of motorsport are great, but the way a rally car has to be both unstable to generate yaw and completely controllable to prevent things from going all urethra-shredding – it is an utter thrill.

One Tiny Stage And I’m Hooked

The run is over in less than three minutes, and considering Pastrana’s best time that weekend was around two minutes and 53 seconds, it’s clear he wasn’t holding back just because there was an amateur in the right seat. Pastrana and Gelsomino have an impressive partnership in the way they attack hundreds of miles during every ARA event, and he says that her race notes have helped them achieve the best podium-to-crash ratio of any top driver in the U.S. – a good thing since he aspires to break his one-surgery-a-year average before he turns 42 in October.

As a firsthand witness to both the lust for adventure that causes such injuries and the carefully measured skill that avoids them, I think he’s got a good shot of breaking the curse. Although he wasn’t competing for an officially timed award, Pastrana won the Goodwood rally circuit’s weekend award for sportsmanship, so it’s clear that everyone he meets is rooting for him as well.

Source: Subaru