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06/25/2008

NEWRY -- The 18th running of the New England Forest Rally will take place July 11-12 in Mexico and Berlin, N.H. A pre-event autograph session and the race start and finish corrals will be located at Sunday River. The New England Forest Rally represents round six of the 2008 Rally America National Championship series as well as the last qualifying round for the 2008 ESPN Summer X Games.

The New England Forest Rally is expected to draw over 50 competitors from across North America and internationally. Top US drivers, including X Games gold medalist Travis Pastrana is entered along with international drivers including Andrew Pinker from Australia, and Antoine L'Estage from Canada. Local driver Christopher Duplessis of Mason Township, Maine is also registered to compete.

The New England Forest Rally kicks off Thursday, July 10 with registration, technical inspectional and autograph signing for race fans. This years autograph signing will be held at the Phoenix House adjacent to the South Ridge Base Lodge. Many of the competing teams will have their competition cars on display after completing practice runs on a course from the Jordan Grand Hotel to the South Ridge Base Area.

The competitive stages start on Friday, July 11 based out of Mexico. On Saturday, the rally will re-start based from Berlin, N.H. where teams will then transit out to run a number of grueling stages. Specific locations for race start and finishes are soon to be finalized. Race details are available at www.rally-america.com.

The sport of performance rally racing has the largest live attendance of any other sport in the world. More than one billion people worldwide will attend performance rally races in 2008. Rally racing is a motorsport where teams race against the clock, one at-a-time, on closed roads at the fastest speed possible on stages they have never seen before. Each team is comprised of two people, a driver and a co-driver. The co-driver reads from stage notes and barks out instructions while the driver is negotiating the course at high speed. The team having the lowest cumulative time over the whole event wins. Teams will compete in street legal, but highly prepared cars that are based upon current popular car models such as the Subaru WRX, Mitsubishi EVO, Dodge Neon, Volkswagen Golf, and Mazda 6.

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