Subaru Rally Team USA announced that it will enter three 600-horsepower WRX STi supercars in the new Americas Rallycross Championship. The first round will begin Friday.
The team’s three entries will be driven by 2012 Asia-Pacific Rally Championship winner Chris Atkinson, 2006 Junior World Rally champion Patrik Sandell, and eight-time Rally America winner David Higgins, who will be rotated out for four-time Rally America champion Travis Pastrana, among other drivers yet to be announced.
Contrary to the series name’s implication, the inaugural race will be held in the United Kingdom, at Silverstone Circuit, between Friday, May 25, and Sunday, May 27. The second stop on the calendar has yet to be announced, though the third race will be in early August, at Circuit Trois-Rivières in Canada. Its season finale will be held at the end of September, at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
All races will be streamed live through the series’ facebook page. Highlights of each event will be broadcast on CBS Sports on the Wednesday after each race.
“We are excited about the growth of rallycross in the USA, and it is a key platform to showcase our production technologies like the Subaru boxer engine and symmetrical all-wheel drive,” stated Dominick Infante, Subaru of America’s director of communications.
Infante detailed to The Drive in an email how the WRX STi differs from its ARX counterpart.
“It starts off as a stock STi but is then obviously heavily modified to become a race car,” stated Infante. “But it does retain a boxer four-cylinder and all-wheel drive. Other than the design of the engine, it does not use many stock parts; they are exchanged for racing components.”
“The driver position is moved farther back in the chassis for better weight distribution, and the radiator is moved into the rear of the car to protect it from crashes. The aero is also tweaked to get downforce as low as 50 MPH.”
“We do not have any plans at the moment for special edition cars,” Infante commented, in response to The Drive’s query regarding potential special edition WRX vehicles to commemorate the brand’s participation in ARX.
Subaru Rally Team USA will face competition from Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross Team, which will deploy star drivers such as Tanner Foust and Scott Speed, both of whom will drive heavily modified Beetle supercars, built to similar specification as the ARX Subarus.