6 Questions with Travis Pastrana at GoodwoodSimon Galloway - Getty ImagesTravis Pastrana needs no introduction at this point, having found huge success in all sorts of different motoring disciplines. The one he was focused on last weekend was the hillclimb at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, specifically with his Subaru Brataroo 9500 Turbo Gymkahana race car. He competed in the event's timed shootout, setting a time of 46.77 seconds and placing sixth overall.Road & Track had a chance to sit down with Pastrana just hours before his run, to talk about the beast of a Subaru pickup he'd be sending up the Duke of Richmond's driveway and a few other topics along the way. The Subaru Motorsports team prepped the Brataroo for this event with a bigger turbo (boosting output to 750 horsepower), revised gear ratios, a new suspension tune, and a more aggressive front lip.Pastrana might be known for driving Subarus sideways, but this weekend was all about setting a fast time. So much so that when I walked up to Pastrana, he was taking every last second to study braking zones and how to extract every last hundredth out of his truck. Our conversation follows.SubaruRoad & Track: What's your favorite thing about the Brataroo?AdvertisementAdvertisementTravis Pastrana: The coolest feature, in my opinion, is that the car gets big and wide and has really a lot of downforce for that rear wing. That just holds the car, glues it to the ground. [Then] I can hit a button and it brings [the wing] in like a Transformer, so I can go through [the section of the hillclimb called] Flint Wall.So the second coolest part is the motor that they have in this vehicle. I shift it three times more, going up and down the hill, because it has to be driven high but it can drive to 9500 rpm. It sounds — when you get up to the top rpm, it sounds like an F1 car going down the road. For me, I think just the sound of it ... it feels like a two-stroke for me. It's kind of nostalgic that way.SubaruR&T: How does the pickup body style change the way this Gymkhana car drives?TP: It has basically four percent more front weight than we had in the Airslayer. And you wouldn't think that's a huge difference, but the way that it drives ... the Airslayer, for example: You pulled the handbrake and it wanted to just rotate around. This one, I can pull the handbrake, and the front wants to kind of pull itself around, which is nice for sending in huge drifts because you never really have to worry about it. But when it's not going to fully come-around on you ... just that four-percent weight change to the front does make it a little bit more understeer-y, which, I thought, more weight to the front would help it turn in. So, having a little bit harder time with turn-in, but makes it a lot easier for full send reverse entry.SubaruR&T: How are you moving the ball forward with jumping capability?AdvertisementAdvertisementTP: None of these vehicles were really made to jump, per se, but we flew them all. So the coolest part about this was — we had the Airslayer, where I could literally pull a handbrake, drop the nose, and then I had a button that the rear wing went up and I could land it. I could fly it like an airplane. However, the Family Huckster — we had a little bit of aero that flipped up on the rear. But if it ever kicked enough ... the front hood was like the biggest wing ever, and we didn't think about that, or at least I didn't think about that. So as soon as it catches, you have these little things in the rear that'll keep it flying flat. But if it kicks enough to the front, it starts to catch wind; it just sucks the front under.So we thought about that when designing this [the Brataroo]. And we actually have aero flaps on the front, so the hood can pop up for downforce or reverse up for lift. So we took the hood and tried to make it as useful as possible, as opposed to just thinking about the hood being a hood.SubaruR&T: The active aero bits moving everywhere is wild. How does that help? And how do you control it?TP: So now, we can actually put the wings up on one side or the other side — help it for cornering, load different tires. Say you're going around a left-hand corner and you're getting too much body roll, because of its setup; a lot of times, you set it up to hit the jumps a little higher for dirt. But if it's a high-speed corner, you can put the wings up on the inside and it'll actually keep the car from rolling and keep weight down on that front left tire, which gives you a lot more turn-in. I have levers; we don't have set up GPS or anything like that. Could be a neat next step, maybe for if we have another one. I mean, they got it in F1, it makes total sense ...AdvertisementAdvertisementSo the only thing that I'm doing, basically, is I'm bringing the "Transformer" in for Flint Wall. Making it shrink. So I just hit a button. Yesterday I hit it a little bit early, and it was starting to go up, like, right as I'd come through, and I knew that, so I gave it a little more room on qualifying. So we got a little more there.SubaruR&T: Why the Subaru Brat?TP: I went to Subaru Headquarters right when I signed with Subaru back in 2004, and they had this red, awesome Subaru Brat — mint condition, white stripe. So I saw that vehicle, and I was like, One day, I'm gonna have this vehicle. And I just like the idea of the seats in the back.I asked for a Brat in the first [Gymkhana]. They said, 'Hey, look, we're gonna do a WRX. We're gonna see what we can get out of this race car. We want to set the record with WRX.' [I responded] 'Like, I do too.' That makes sense. The second car, [Subaru was] like, 'Yeah, we really don't do trucks anymore. Like, that's not really what we do.' And the wagon was such a big hit and [there was] so much nostalgia, everybody at Subaru was like, 'You know what? For the third one — that's your last Gymkhana, we're gonna give you the car you really always wanted.' That was really cool for me.AdvertisementAdvertisementAnd plus, we ended up going down to Australia. The Brumby, as they call it, is a pretty popular car out there.SubaruR&T: How does Ken Block's legacy find its way into this build, and the Gymkhana project?TP: The biggest thing with Ken ... he gave me the opportunity to kind of take the reins a little bit with Gymkhana. He was still doing it; he did Electrikhana, and Hillkhana. But he wanted to basically see if [the] Gymkhana series could work with a different driver. He kind of entrusted me to that. He said, 'If you can get more than 20 million views, you get three.' And then we [would] do a Ken-versus-me in a head-to-head Gymkhana, which will never happen, but was something that we were both really excited about and had a lot of ideas for. And then the goal was, ultimately, to kind of pass it down to one of his kids, as Lia and Mika are both very, very into driving ...With all the cars that we build — and especially the last one, since Ken had passed after the first two ... [Block] always said, close proximity with high risk. Close proximity, meaning like, cliffs, hanging a tire off the edge, close to trees, close to buildings, that kind of stuff. Skilled driving. He's like, 'You can do some jumps, but not too much this Nitro Circus stuff.'AdvertisementAdvertisementAnd he said, 'Amazing build in an unbelievable location.' So, location; car build; proximity. So, when you do the car build, and you want to make it amazing, you want to make it something that's never been seen before. What can we do that looks really good in proximity? And how can we make a car that does what Ken would expect from a Gymkhana car?You Might Also LikeIf You Can Only Own One Car, Make It One of TheseThese Are the Most Popular Cars by State
