The WRC is for just anyone these days...
 

http://jalopnik.com/5497042/how-a-50...k-rally-racers

$500 car off Craig's List places 3rd in Rally Mexico.

This should be the equivalent of tossing together an F1 car in your garage and taking a podium in your first race out. Except that the WRC is to F1 what LeMons is to Le Mans these days.

Yeah, I was just reading that article. Its a pretty cool story.

Its kinda cool to think that even these days, you can hack your way into a premier racing series still.

I dunno. I think this is pretty good evidence that the WRC is far from a "premier racing series" these days.

Wow.

What class was he actually in? I scanned the article but didn't catch that.

After looking into it a bit further, he wasn't in a WRC class, he was actually running in a separate national level rally that was run concurrently on the same stages at the same time. This happens all the time when a rally is sanctioned for multiple championships, in this case, WRC, JWRC, WRC Cup and Rally América -- not to be confused with the US based Rally America.

So, he basically took third in the slowest possible level. But hell, I'd still take it. He beat customer Evo 9's and Peugeot 206s (which were likely ex-WRC cars from 10 years ago).

I found this thread on Special Stage forums from the co-driver.

http://www.specialstage.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=40018

Best part at the end...

Results:

http://www.rallymexico.com/contentEs...ally%20America

It's still full of epic win. I wonder if Jalopnik is already planning a LeMons rally series. :lol:

an awesome experience to have, but yeah the article is super misleading as they basically ran in a Catch all class , but hell If/when i ever get to do a WRC Mexico its gonna be the same sorta deal (in a catch all / rally-america class) :cool:

I like this part:

"Got there too late to do reconnaissance and had to mooch stage notes from the Peruvian rally champion. Dude is cool but notes are in Spanish or something. So e's are rights and d's are lefts?"

Close!

esquerda Quatro y derache cinco (left 4 and right five)

ya i'de be scrapping my rally car off a wall or tree if i was trying to drive at full speed with that! lol

Wonder what the story was with that evo 9 in the catch all, but damn! that rocks the socks! :D

izquierdo/a and derecho/a, but yeah.