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Written by:
Bill Wood
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com
05/13/2008 - 06:35 PM
Los Angeles, Calif.
ACP has found a way to work drifting technique into his rally efforts. (Bill Wood photo) » More Photos
Now that Rim of the World is hibernating, my favorite round of the Rally America championship is Oregon Trail, running this weekend between Portland and the mountains west of the Rose City. Its unique route mounts everything from the paved road course at Portland International Raceway, the gravel access roads surrounding the raceway and the deceptive mountain gravel that’s flirts with the sunlight slicing through the trees blanketing the mountainsides.
In fact, one of my most memorable moments in any racing event came a couple years ago when one of the lead cars on the rally navigated the carousel at the end of the drag strip at PIR then dove into the right-hander only to awaken what seemed like every duck in Oregon shortly thereafter. That right-hand bend bounds to the left of what must be a massive aviary in quieter times. As the blue Subaru roared through the gears, hundreds of ducks rose on cue – one after the other – in a Hitchcock moment that couldn’t have been recreated in Hollywood even with months of CGI. They would have blotted out the sun if it weren’t for the clouds already accomplishing the task. And no amount of audio post, sound sweetening, or foley design would have captured the blend of duck calls and wing and turbo flutter. You had to be there…
Even with the mind-numbing traffic headed north out of downtown Portland to the Friday evening spectator stages at PIR, the event is worth a day or so.
Last year at Oregon Trail, Andrew Pinker inserted himself into the Rally America championship picture with a 46-second victory over Ken Block, but this year Pinker is no where to be seen in the championship and Block is successfully keeping the field at bay. Currently he’s 13 points ahead of Canadian Andrew Comrie-Picard, or ACP for short. ACP may be the most consistent rally driver in North America. In fact, if anyone could be considered rallying’s renaissance man it’s ACP. His résumé includes TV host, entertainment lawyer and – here’s how he put it in an e-mail – “Undergraduate degree in Philosophy
“France was an aborted attempt to study French culture and philosophy in Paris that ended with me dropping out, writing and producing a musical in Paris, then with a friend driving a VW Westfalia 60,000km including North Africa in July and Scandinavia in January," he explains. “We studied culture after all, but on the ground.”
Andrew Comrie-Picard (Bill Wood photo) » More Photos
Find that kind of educational renaissance in any other motorsport discipline! He still does some legal work for Slowboy Racing in Pennsylvania, a shop that tunes his Mitsubishi Evo, specializes in turbocharging and has grown from its drag racing roots.
Andrew doesn’t win often in a rally weekend but early in his career, he earned both the Novice and Open class championships in Canada in the same year. That hasn’t been done before or since. He told me the other day that his main interest currently is another X Games invitation and pushing for wins can sometimes be contrary to being invited to the biggest stage in action sports.
Bet the house that entertainment lawyers working in Manhattan know stages! Again, from the same email, “I was at a 400-lawyer firm but got pulled into their seven lawyer entertainment group, headed by two of the most important partners on Broadway. I did theatre, film, music, and book deals.
“We handled the Napster case on behalf of the music industry, Cole Porter's legacy, all of Sondheim's work, all of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's American work, and perhaps the highlight is I had a supermodel as a client. Can't tell you who!” You appreciate ACP more after talking with drivers who can’t wait to graduate high school so they can crash cars into walls…
So in the midst of learning about ACP, I round a corner at the Formula Drift Long Beach round and there he is in the Mopar pits in full conversation with team principals and looking right at home.
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