Kenny Brack, the 1999 Indianapolis 500 winner, captured the gold medal in the X Games 15 rally competition last weekend, defeating 2008 champion Travis Pastrana in the Super Special Rally Final.
Brack, who has been retired from competitive racing since running the 2005 Indy 500, drove the 450-horsepower Olsbergs Motorsport Evolution Ford Fiesta brilliantly, clinching the gold when his competition, Pastrana, spun wide and clipped the wall in the finale.
"The Olsbergs Fiesta was a great car and this victory is the result of a lot of hard work by the team," said Brack, who became the first invited driver to the X Games rally competition to win. "The Fiesta is a great little car, very fast, especially on tarmac. The whole package was fantastic.
"We ran a single set of BFGoodrich tyres today and never had any problem. I almost destroyed the car in practice this morning because I never jumped the jumps before and because it is a different technique I landed on the nose and ripped the roll bar and everything off of the car.
"We managed to re-group and the crew worked hard to get it ready for the elimination rounds. After that first problem, the jumps all went fine. You can dream about something like this, but the reality is often different. But today, everything fell our way."
Brack's toughest competition came in the semi-final when he raced neck and neck with his team-mate Tanner Foust. Brack edged Foust when the ROCKSTAR Fiesta man suffered a miscue on course. Foust thus had to settle for the bronze medal.
"The Fiesta was running good and unfortunately Kenny and I got stuck up against each other in the semi-finals so it was Fiesta vs. Fiesta," said Foust, who described the Fiesta as 'an angry little beast' earlier in the week. "Ford had three of the final four, which shows the strength of the car.
"I was a little slow against Kenny on the first half of the track, but on the second half I made it up and I think I may have passed him a little bit. Then coming around the fountain a barrier had moved in the competition and I just made an error and I drove up basically his lane instead of mine and I had to do a 180 and come back and that cost me at least 4 or 5 seconds and Kenny took it. He is an amazing driver and Kenny has such a big background and he deserves it. Best of all, Ford has 1 and 3 at the X Games and that is a lot of hardware."
Meanwhile Brian Deegan, the Motocross star turned rally racer, finished fourth overall after he lost a turbo hose on his ROCKSTAR Fiesta during a semi-final match-up with his old rival Pastrana.
