Four Wheel Fury

Travis Pastrana is a busy man. The 23-year-old whirlwind cut his teeth in Supercross and made his mark – quite authoritatively – in FMX, earning medal after medal in the X Games. Not one to rest on his prior successes, Travis chases down every opportunity to push his limits, accepting every invitation to climb aboard anything with wheels and an engine and pinning it wide open every time. His pursuits have most recently led him to rally car racing; not surprisingly to anyone who knows him, Pastrana and his co-driver Christian Edstrom just wrapped up the Rally America National Championship title in only their second full season.

It’s not just about titles and medals for Travis, however. The competition never ends, even when it comes down to a friendly bet between him, his father, and two of his cousins as to who could spend the longest amount of time submerged up to his neck in ice water in the back of a pickup truck on a cold Thanksgiving Day in Maryland. Travis won, by the way. When asked what drives him so hard, Travis was quick to reply. “Competition and fun. I just want to put myself up against the best.” That desire keeps him on the road non-stop. His yearly to-do list is currently topped with the Rally America dates and the X Games, with every other weekend packed with whatever event sounds fun to him – no matter what continent it’s on – and every second in between stuffed with appearances. We caught up with him in a hotel in Los Angeles between radio and TV appearances, the Fuel TV Action Sports Awards, and a taping with the cast of America’s Next Top Model. “I’ve been at the airport so many times not knowing what airline I was on, what my destination was, or what I was going to do there,” says Travis. “I’m just there to have fun. On the rare occasion that they tell me I have a weekend off, I’m like, ‘Okay, what can I do?’ Most normal people would stay at home, but I’m trying to track down an event to go to. I’m calling Red Bull, asking, ‘What kind of car can I drive this weekend?’” Travis is, in fact, finding himself behind the wheel of a lot of different cars lately. He took a proving run in a Champ car in Indianapolis recently, and made his second appearance as a competitor in the Race of Champions Nations Cup in France. Rally’s his true love, however. “There are a lot of opportunities for me to do things like NASCAR,” Travis points out, “and I’d never turn down the chance to grab a seat and have some fun, but I’m all about rally. It’s just so much fun. There’s snow, sand, jumps… You’re flying in the air at night at 120MPH with your lights shining on the tops of the trees, no clue where you’re going, cliff on one side, and your co-driver says, ‘Pin it!’ And you trust him. You’re just totally pumped up the whole time.” It’s no secret that Pastrana prefers the adrenaline rush to the calculated approach. “I’m not a precisionist. I like sliding around, hanging the back end off of a cliff, brushing trees. If you have a good stage, all four corners of your car are gone – clipped a tree on every corner – that’s cool!” That all-or-nothing, jump-in-the-fire approach has worked pretty well for Pastrana, even if it has scored him a few bruises along the way. “I’d rather jump in way over my head and see if I can swim. A lot of other guys want to take it easy and make their way through the ranks – don’t get me wrong, I crash out a lot more than those guys, but I think in the long run you get there quicker. As long as I’m battling and have the speed to run up front, I’m pretty happy. If I can jump from event to event and run up front or set the fastest time, that’s pretty cool.” Travis has obviously been learning fast behind the wheel of his rally car, but what about his two-wheel career? “Did I ever win a 250 Supercross Championship?” Travis asks. “No. Was that my all-time goal? Yes. But it’s time now to look at rally as the next step. It’s just time to have a new challenge.” That new challenge has even been a boost to Pastrana’s maturity as a competitor. “Every time I’d line up on the start line [racing motocross], I’d believe that I was the best and that I was going to win. That hurt me because I wanted to win every race and I’d do whatever I could to make that happen. With rally, I have the co-driver to keep me in line. We got all podiums this year – except for one race we crashed out at – but we only won two events. That sucked for me because I’d rather win more events, but we ended up locking up the Championship with one more round still to go.” With the Rally America title under his belt, is Pastrana planning on taking a stab at World Rally Championship racing? You can count on it. “If you’re not doing it against the best in the world, what’s the point? Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got more competition than I can handle here in the States, but you drive exactly to the level you need to. I want to be driving so far over my head that my car is a mangled piece of crap when I come in.” Mangled or not, Pastrana will no doubt be pushing his 199 car to the limit, continuing to thrill his fans (both old and new), and bringing more exposure to rally racing in the U.S.