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@the_pacenotes

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X Games, 2006. Rally Final. Colin McRae leading Travis Pastrana by half a second heading into the final stage.
Then his Subaru flips completely.
Most drivers would be rattled. McRae floored it the second the car landed back on its wheels, pushing flat out to the finish anyway.
He still took silver. Pastrana, watching the whole thing, said it afterwards without hesitation.
"Dude, Colin McRae is a god. The guy's amazing."
A flip that cost him gold. A reaction that cemented a legend. 🏁🔥
#colinmcrae #travispastrana #rallylegends #wrc by @the_pacenotes

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4 hours ago

Front wheel drive. No turbo. No AWD. Just a Skoda Felicia Kit Car in the World Rally Championship.
The Felicia made its WRC debut at the 1996 Portugal Rally. Pavel Sibera finished second in class. Then won in Australia.
Then came New Zealand. Emil Triner crossed the finish line and celebrated the only way that made sense.
He drifted onto the finish ramp. In a front wheel drive car.
Nobody asked. Nobody expected it. He just did it anyway.
Then Stig Blomqvist — 1984 World Rally Champion — took the same little Felicia and put it on the overall podium at the RAC Rally in the snow and ice. (Fandom)
A Czech hatchback. Beating proper WRC cars. On front wheel drive.
This is why rallying is the greatest motorsport on earth.
#skodafelicia #wrc #rallylegends #kitcar #fwd by @the_pacenotes

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18 hours ago

Forgotten cars of Group B.
Everyone talks about the Quattro, the 205 T16, the 037. But Group B had an entire undercard of machines history quietly left behind.
Mazda RX-7 — rotary power taking on the European giants in the mountains, never quite matching the factory budgets around it.
BMW M1 — a mid-engine supercar turned rally weapon, more at home on tarmac than gravel, but genuinely raced in period.
Toyota Celica Twincam Turbo TA64 — rear wheel drive, turbocharged, battling through forest stages before Toyota built their AWD reputation.
Mitsubishi Lancer 2000 Turbo — airborne over Finnish crests, years before the Evo badge meant anything to anyone.
Mitsubishi Starion — a genuine oddity, a turbocharged coupe thrown into the Group B mix almost as an experiment.
Ford Escort RS1700T — developed, tested, then cancelled before it ever got a real shot at competing.
Group B wasn't just five or six legendary cars. It was an entire ecosystem of manufacturers all trying to find the next big thing — most of them forgotten the moment the era ended. 🏁🔥
#groupb #rallylife #vintagemotorsport #wrc #rallylegends by @the_pacenotes

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a day ago

1988 Paris-Dakar Rally. Ari Vatanen, defending champion, dominating the event in his Peugeot 405 T16.
Then overnight, in Bamako, his race leading car simply vanishes from the service park.
Hours later, team boss Jean Todt gets a phone call. A ransom demand 25 million francs to get the car back.
They eventually found it. But by the time it was recovered, Vatanen had missed the time window to rejoin the rally. He was disqualified from an event he was winning outright.
Fellow Finn Juha Kankkunen inherited the win in the older Peugeot 205 T16.
Vatanen got his revenge anyway winning Dakar the next three years straight. But 1988 remains one of the strangest chapters in motorsport history.
#arivatanen #dakarrally #parisdakar #peugeot #dakar by @the_pacenotes

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2 days ago

Safari Rally, 2002. 4:15pm. Richard Burns, reigning world champion, buried in fesh-fesh fine, powder-like dust that swallows wheels whole.
His Peugeot's damaged front suspension had already turned it into an accidental snowplough, ploughing straight into the stuff rather than rolling over it.
Burns and his co-driver jump out, physically hauling a spare tyre, digging, shoving anything they can find under the wheels. Spectators even join in trying to help.
It wasn't enough. One of rallying's most respected champions, brought to a complete stop by powder-fine African dust, just metres from the finish.
The Safari Rally has never cared about reputation. 🏜️🏁
#richardburns #safarirally #wrc #rallylegends #peugeot206 by @the_pacenotes

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2 days ago

Safari Rally, 1992. Kenya. A Toyota Celica GT-Four draped in bull bars and spotlights, kicking up a wall of golden dust in the evening light.
Deep ruts, flooded sections, dust so thick drivers often couldn't see the road ahead. The Safari was never just a rally — it was a test of whether the car, and the driver, could physically survive Africa.
This was the era when Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi all built specific Safari-spec cars with reinforced suspension and extra protection, purely because standard WRC machinery simply couldn't handle it.
Nothing tested a rally car's durability quite like this event. 🌍🏁
#safari #toyotacelica #wrc #lancia #rally by @the_pacenotes

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3 days ago

Paris-Dakar, 1990. Chad. Thousands of kilometres of raw Saharan desert, and a rider pushing a bike through sand dunes that shift with every gust of wind.
No marked roads. No barriers. Just a rally book, a compass, and pure instinct to find the next waypoint through an ocean of sand.
This was Dakar before GPS made navigation easier. Riders genuinely got lost in the desert, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.
Chad '90 was one of the most brutal legs the event ever ran. This footage shows exactly why. 🏜️🏍️
#parisdakar #dakar #rallyraid #desertracing by @the_pacenotes

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3 days ago

Colin McRae. Subaru Impreza WRC98, that iconic 555 blue and gold livery screaming through a tarmac mountain stage.
A cliff wall on one side, a drop on the other, barely any run-off between the car and disaster.
McRae didn't take corners carefully. He attacked them full commitment, every apex clipped, the car dancing right on the edge of grip through terrain that gave zero margin for error.
This is peak McRae. Peak Impreza. One of the most iconic driver-car combinations rallying has ever produced. 🔵💛
#colinmcrae #subaruimpreza #wrc #rallylegends #subaruwrx by @the_pacenotes

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4 days ago

Rally Cyprus, 2002. Final day. McRae leading, fighting Marcus Grönholm for the win.
Stage 16. He rolls the Ford Focus completely. Power steering broken, 50 seconds lost in an instant.
Mechanics patch it up at service. He goes back out on stage 18 — and rolls it again.
Most drivers would call it there. McRae kept pushing, dropped to seventh, and still fought his way back into the points by the finish.
Two rolls in one day. He just kept driving anyway.
#colinmcrae #rallylife #wrc #fordfocus #rallylegends by @the_pacenotes

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5 days ago

1Top Gear India Special, 2011. Clarkson, Hammond and May, three old British cars, and a trade mission challenge thrown at them by the show itself.
Jaguar XJS, Rover Mini, Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow British classics, built for English roads, suddenly thrown into a hillclimb up through Jaipur against local traffic, heat, and conditions none of them were ever designed for.
The cars took a brutal beating across the whole special — breaking down, overheating, getting absolutely hammered by Indian roads and climate.
Classic Top Gear chaos, somewhere it genuinely shouldn't have been attempted.
#topgear #hillclimb #clarkson #hammond #jamesmay by @the_pacenotes

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5 days ago

Rally GB. Grönholm's stage ends with a British police officer standing right there, full uniform, helmet and all.
Deadpan Finnish driver meets deadpan British bobby. Neither side showing much emotion, both just doing their job in completely different olympics of understatement.
No drama needed. Just two professionals from two different worlds, having the most British-Finnish interaction possible on a closed road in Wales.
Sometimes the best rally moments have nothing to do with the stage itself. 😂🏁
#marcusgrönholm #rallygb #wrc #rallylegends #rallylife by @the_pacenotes

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6 days ago

Rally Mexico, 2015. Ott Tänak. Los Mexicanos stage, just 2.6km in.
Front right suspension damage meant he couldn't steer around the next left hand corner. The car went off the edge, rolled, and landed straight in a lake.
"As soon as we opened the doors the water came in and the car sank." Fully submerged in about 15 seconds. Tänak and co-driver Raigo Mõlder swam free, Mõlder somehow still holding onto his pace notes.
M-Sport pulled the Ford Fiesta out of the lake, dried it out, and had it running again overnight.
Tänak was back on stage the very next day. This sport doesn't know how to quit. 🌊🏁
#otttanak #rallymexico #wrc #rally #msport by @the_pacenotes

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7 days ago