A couple of weekends ago when both Staples Center and Home Depot Center were getting tons of love for the X Games, Will “Cheesecake” Roegge and myself had the honor of following Andrew Comrie Picard and his ACP Rally team with their Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution (8 or 9 I forget). As always, things were really last minute so it was a pain to get media passes just so we could shoot at the event. Fortunately, our people called some other people who knew people that could talk to people in order to swing us some credentials. Though that never really helps out when you try to sign in and pick it up. Genius security guards ask for your Media Credential before you go into the tent to pick up your Media Credentials. Good stuff. It was my first time at X Games, not sure about Will, so I didn’t realize that the infield was set up for the Moto X until Saturday night. That’s when they finished the competitions, tore everything down, and rebuilt the course for the rally racing.
The “Rally Practice” that was listed in the schedule for the first few days was just the tarmac racing in the parking lot. Sucked for us shooting, but it was even worse for the rally drivers since they would have a bunch of flat tarmac driving practice and very little in the dirt and on the giant jump. For Andrew and Team ACP, their goal was not only to win the event, but also redeem themselves for the major wreck last year where their Evo flipped end over end after landing the jump. Though Andrew managed to walk away with minimal physical injuries, his ego had to be a bit damaged. Especially with the YouTube video that has been circulated however many times. Sorry, you’ll have to search it because I am currently too lazy to link it for you.
Throughout the tarmac practice, Andrew did pretty well. And that’s saying a lot since there were a grip of top drivers out there like DC Shoes’ Ken Block, multiple time Formula D champ Tanner Foust, Red Bull’s Travis Pastrana, Dave Mirra, and Metal Mulisha’s Brian Deegan. One lame part of the day was just me being stupid. During the tarmac practice I realized that I didn’t have my car keys in my pocket or any of the 30 pockets of my Goodyear tires backpack (man, I think this backpack is dope, but sometimes I lose things just because there are too many pockets to deal with). So we’re not just talking my car keys, because my house, gate, and mailbox ones were attached as well. So even if I got a ride home to get my spare car key, I wouldn’t be able to get in. I started backtracking and filed a report at lost and found just in case. I made it all the way back to my car only to realize that I had very stupidly left the keys in the center console, meaning my doors were unlocked. Lucky for me that there isn’t a big demand for C320 Benz station wagons with bent four Privat wheels. OK. So that was my stupid deed for the weekend.
I don’t really remember eating the first day we were there. Will and I just roamed around trying to get as much footage as possible. We did, however, stop by the Muscle Milk booth and grab a couple bottles of that to tide us over until we could actually get a full meal that didn’t consist of overpriced cardboard pizza or dried up nacho cheese with stale chips. Before we bounced, we met up with Guinness Book record holder Ronnie Renner and got some shots of him talking about the sportback Ralliart Lancer that he was rolling around with. Not sure if Will took any spy shots of his girlfriend or sister, but I’m hoping he did.
Throughout the day I kept getting calls and text messages about doing a couple more videos either that same day, the next morning, the next afternoon, the next night, the morning after that, that night, or the sometime during the rally finals on Sunday. Nothing came through so we were chillen until Sunday when it came to the X Games.
Early Sunday morning they were still setting up the rally dirt course and big ass jump. I think they started practice an hour or so late, so it gave us some time to set up. Oh, it was pretty dope because Jarod DeAnda (voice of Formula D) was doing the live commentary during the racing.
ACP was one of the first cars to practice and he hit the jump hard. I mean HARD with dirt, metal, and carbon fiber flying everywhere. We stayed and shot the other cars for a bit then went to his pits to see what was up. There were a lot of fluids leaking as well as damage to the intercooler piping and exhaust. When we asked if they’d be ready for the race, they said that they had to be. It seemed like they should have delayed eliminations a bit since they started practice late, but they didn’t. We had to run back to the stands and try to nab a good spot not knowing whether or not we’d get CBed by security for shooting video.
They said that last year the ACP car flipped because he wasn’t going fast enough, but that definitely wasn’t the case for the 2009 X Games. Every jump that Andrew made was way beyond what he needed to clear the jump. Maybe even too fast since it made his landing really rough. During the break, the team had tied the Evo’s core support to another car in an attempt to pull it out and straight. At this point, there was so much damage to the car that even if ACP drove his very best, he’d have a hard time winning. That didn’t stop him from trying, but he ended up getting eliminated in one of the rounds. It’s hard to keep track of the rounds with the hour or so inbetween them while you’re sitting in the stands sweating your ass off. We should have snuck over to the street skating competition so I could remind myself that I used to be good…20 F-en years ago! OK. More like 15.
Even though the team we were following got eliminated, we tried to stay a little longer to see some more rally racing action. We got to see Ken Block go around the jump and almost cause a pretty big accident, which got him disqualified. I guess he came around the turn too slow and didn’t have enough speed to attempt the jump so he went with whatever seemed like the best option considering the circumstances.
http://www.rikdaddy.com/ssp_director/albums/album-17/lg/xgames030.jpg
Too much rally action for us so we ended up bouncing without waiting for the finals so I wouldn’t even be able to tell you who won. Then again, that’s not my job anymore anyway. LOL. I’m sure you can find the results if you really wanted to. Now if you wanted to see some pictures, you can find them in my Events Gallery on RikDaddy.com. The ACP video should be done soon. Actually, we’re finished with it on our end and are just waiting for approval so I’ll let you know when it’s up. Not sure what event we’ll be hitting next, but we’ll keep you updated if you follow us on Twitter: Will Roegge, Ricky Chu, Medium Monster.
Ricky “RikDaddy” Chu
www.MediumMonster.com
www.RikDaddy.com
i like your writing style btw .. ;)