Screaming down the forest rally stage at Goodwood Festival of Speed with Travis Pastrana at the wheel of Subaru's WRX ARA25 rally car is probably as close as you can get to the forrest defenders scene in "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi." My stomach gets cozy with my spinal column as a blur of green leaves and black tree trunks blur past the windows. A few "wahoos" escape, along with some violently delightful horn honks during the donut portion of the track (hey, don't put the horn button at my feet
and not expect a few toots) and then I let my rally-mashed brain ask a pretty stupid question: Does it ever get routine? Is it boring, screaming around the same track 20 times with some 20 journalists? Is this just another day at the office?
"Never. I never get tired of it," Pastrana said. After our ride, Subaru rally co-driver Rhianon Gelsomino takes my helmet from me, with a grin as wide as mine. She, too, never gets tired of the speed, the sound and the challenge of rally driving. Seeing the joy on people's faces when they experience that familiar thrill is just as good. It's a joy Subaru wants to share, not just with some journalists, but with fans of the sport. Which is why Subaru is putting this legendary duo into a more accessible, closer-to-stock Subaru WRX ARA25L car, to bring this mad-cap joy to the masses and show that you — yes, you — can drive the same track as Pastrana and Gelsomino.
Read more: These Mods May Look Good, But They'll Just Make Your Car Slower
Do You Have The Car Of A Winner?
The car we enjoyed a hot lap in is not the car Pastrana and Gelsomino will be driving in upcoming races. We did our laps in the WRX ARA25 car, which is the ride of American drivers Brandon Semenuk and co-driver Keaton Williams — the pair that nabbed the Subaru WRX ARA25 its first win in the car during its inaugural race at the Ojibwe Forests Rally in August 2023.
The WRX ARA25 is meant for the Open series, so it is pretty far from stock. The team analyzed every inch of the WRX and, in conjunction with the World Rally Championship rule book, and made a faster, stronger version of the OEM car. Though it has the original chassis of a WRX and is recognizable as a WRX, everything underneath the bodywork is pretty specialized. While the WRX ARA25 still comes with a 4-cylinder boxer engine, this one took 18 months to develop and cranks out 320 horsepower and 380 pound-feet of torque. That's actually less torque than the ARA25L's 460 lb-ft, but the ARA25 is still the toughest, more race-focused of the two builds. The ARA25L is closer to 90% stock verses the ARA25's 65%. When it comes to the engine, however, in the ARA25L is 99% stock, with the familiar 2.4-liter FA24 boxer engine coming out nearly unchanged.
If you have such a fantastic rally car, why put your most famous driver in the Limited series, where the rules are much stricter about what teams are allowed to modify on their vehicles? Because the Limited car is all about aspiration. Rally has been around in the U.S. for around 50 years, but Subaru practically popularized the racing form in the U.S. by providing everyday fans with the chance to get behind the wheel of an affordable and powerful vehicle that could easily be upgraded for rallying. The sport is not in danger of losing its foothold in per se, but the accessibility is in danger as OEM builds get beefier and more specialized. Subaru, once again, aims to challenge those new norms with the WRX ARA25L. It's meant to open up the sport to regular joes like us, and encourage civilians with the dream of driving the same track as absolute legends like Pastrana and Gelsomino. Will you win? Hell no. But will you get to see a blue-and-yellow streak similar to your car scream by as you rebuild your suspension from the pits? Yep.
Over The Hill And Through The Woods
The WRX ARA25 car was built for performance from the ground up by Subaru and its partner Vermont SportsCar, plus many different suppliers besides. And all those special parts make the ARA25 shine. The car is so quick, Pastrana used every inch of his lightning-fast reflexes to pilot the car through the narrow Goodwood track and its slippery, dusty curves. All of southern England was brown and dusty from a drought, making the ARA25 skid around corners as if there were ice on the track.
The Limited car doesn't sound like quite Pastrana's cup of tea, as his trademark style of throwing a car into the curves and pulling out when the ancestors speak to him won't quite work well with such a comparatively delicate build.
"When I think I'm going to die? I'm really, really good at that," Pastrana said. "I like to go all out. The ARA25L might as well be a Cadillac compared to this car (the ARA25)."
But in terms of importance to the sport? It could mean the world. While standing around in the paddock discussing the car with Subaru's engineers, Pastrana interrupted journalists for the sake of a young fan.
"This guy says he's going to be a race car driver!" he said, while helping the kid, who couldn't have been more than 12, into the driver's seat of the ARA25. More smiles all around from drivers and pit crew. Maybe that kid will be the next one running in the Limited series in a WRX of his own. Only time will tell, but it's clear that both the WRX ARA25 and ARA25L are the stuff that dreams are made of.
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