A DIRTY DEBUT
Vancouver duo set to campaign Canada’s first Scion FR-S rally car in Merritt
Two weeks prior to its debut today at the Pacific Forest Rally in Merritt, the first Scion FR-S rally car in Canada was still missing a few parts. Like seats. And doors. And just the one gravel tire bolted on.
Were the dynamic duo behind the upcoming campaign worried at all?
“Oh, it’ll be done in plenty of time,” said mechanic and codriver Nick Shtyrin, leaning back on a Nissan Skyline GT-R, “I can’t work on it Thursday though, I’m going drifting that day.”
The FR-S’s pilot, Jason Bailey, was a bit more realistic.
“It’ll be right up to the last minute,” he says, “Every rally I’ve ever gone to, you’re working on the car at midnight before the race.”
“Actually,” Shtyrin chimes in, “I’ll be the one working underneath the car. You’ll be holding my sandwich or something.”
As any rally driver will tell you, the relationship between driver and co-driver is a special one. There’s a bond of trust there, firstly that the codriver is clear and precise with instructions as the car hurtles along the gravel, with cliffs, ditches, and unforgiving pines lining the road; secondly, that the driver holds the lives of both in the palm of his hand, and unlike many other forms of motorsport, any mistake has a double impact.
And here we’ve got a more interesting pair than you usually meet. While there’s no established stereotype for the Vancouver tech-sector entrepreneur, you feel like one could be based off Bailey’s amiable, enthusiastic character. He drives a Tesla Model S. He’s founded several successful Internet companies. He has a slightly restless manner about him, and seems to be taking this whole rallying business as yet another challenge to be conquered.
However, peel back another layer and there’s some borkbased madness here. Tucked away in the back of the shop — Bailey owns the space, and Shtyrin runs his repair shop, Nickel Automotive, out of it — is a wildly eclectic collection of partly disassembled race cars and old Swedish heavy metal. There are at least four Saab 96s, a Renault Alpine, some sort of stock car racer, an Amphicar, a Land Rover Defender, a fibreglass shell that could belong to pretty much anything, and a dusty Saab Sonnet parked next to a Lotus I can’t identify. They all belong to Bailey.
In between all these strange treasures are some of Shtyrin’s projects, beasts of an entirely different colour. A big-turbo conversion JDM Skyline tucks in alongside that low and light Alpine, and there’s a caged Nissan 240SX in the corner, stacked up with spare tires and rims deep-dished enough to house a family of four.
“I’ve had probably seventy 240s,” the laid-back Shtyrin says, “I think between me and a friend, we’ve actually driven the prices of those cars up.”
He has a new project sitting to one side, ready to be kitted up for Thursday’s event. “Rally,” he says, “It’s just drifting on gravel anyway, right?”
Watching Bailey and Shtyrin banter, you get the sense they’ve been racing together for years, but this is a relatively new venture. The car has only really just been through its shakedown procedure, and when it takes to the Nicola Valley today for the fourth stage of the Canadian Rally Championships, it’ll be the first time the car has officially raced on Canadian soil. More than that, it’ll be the first purpose-built FR-S rally car to ever run a stage in Canada.
Sure, the FR-S has Subaru roots, including a low centre of gravity from that 2.0-litre flatfour engine, but Bailey has a better explanation for why he chose the Scion for competition. “It’s the modern equivalent of the Mk. II Escort,” he says instantly. It’s a fair comparison — like the old EuroFord rally battler, the FR-S is light, nimble, balanced, and best of all, rear-wheel-drive. And that means sideways.
While it’s a rear- drive machine with a Scion badge, the FR-S has some rally-bred roots already, thanks to Subaru. Here, its 2.0L flat-four engine awaits a new ECU that’ll boost power and allow for leftfoot braking.
For more than three decades now, the story of rallying has been one of four-wheel-drive competition. Audi versus Lancia. Subaru versus Mitsubishi. The battle between the WRX and the EVO defined an entire generation of cars, and continues to be the source of an infinite number of arguments any time car guys come together.
In the two-wheel-drive rally classes, front-wheel-drive cars tend to see the most use. Traction in snow and ice can benefit a front-driver, and with a dab or two of left-foot braking to help get the nose in, even a modestly powered car can be competitive.
You don’t get more much more modestly powered than the Franken-Saab that’s parked out in Nickel Automotive’s lot. This was Bailey’s first foray into rallying, and it bears the scars and stitch marks to prove it.
“It was pretty ugly to begin with,” he says, “But every time I hit a snow bank, it looked a little better.”
However, as much fun as it was to beetle along logging roads, occasionally rolling over onto the roof and the rolling back, a Saab 96 specialty, the vintage rally car was slow. Dead slow.
“It made a hundred horsepower on a good day, and is really heavy,” Bailey says, “If you didn’t keep up your momentum, you’d have trouble going up hills.”
Enter the FR-S, which is modern enough to have good availability of parts if anything breaks, and enough power to be competitive. As Bailey and Shtyrin are competing in the more-restrictive production class, there’ll be no big turbos or other heavy modifications, but they have managed to squeeze out a few extra horsepower via intake and ECU trickery.
It’s not making the power that’s been the issue, it’s getting past some of the FR-S’s modern car quirks. Left-foot braking, where a driver applies the brakes while still under throttle in order to pitch weight forward and increase front-end bite, caused the little Scion’s ECU to go somewhat berserk. Having both the throttle and brake in at the same time sounds like a panic move to a street car’s computer so it defaults to limp mode. A new stand-alone system lets Bailey perform the necessary three-pedal Irish jig to get the Scion sideways and sliding.
They’ve also built the car to take an impact safely, with a roll cage that’s above and beyond the standard safety requirements. It’s something of a necessity.
At a rally in Idaho earlier this year used as a shakedown event, there may have been a slight contretemps.
“We were just happy to finish,” Bailey says, “As a number of teams DNF’d. Well, I suppose technically we DNF’d a stage too when we drove off a cliff, but it was only a little cliff.”
The rally FR-S does have a few battle scars already, but its suspension is clean and shiny, and extremely durable. Control arms made of titanium are supplied by sponsor SPL — a contact made through Shtyrin’s drifting exploits — and these join a carefully stitch-welded chassis with hundreds of hours spent strengthening every possible seam and factory weak point.
“Rallying gives you more of a beating than any other motorsport,” Bailey says, “The car has to stand up.”
While currently this Scion is a front-runner in rally for the Canadian scene, there’s help coming. Toyota has just released a rally-spec version of the GT-86 (what they call the FR-S in the Japanese domestic market), one that comes with a number of performance and durability components that should soon be available through dealerships under Toyota’s TRD brand. That would make the modifications legal under production class rules as well, as the parts would be coming from a manufacturer.
With the FR-S already wellrepresented at any local drift event, autocross, or on-track lapping day, the rally stage is a new battlefield for Toyota’s little coupe. It’ll be good both for Toyota’s development programs, and for the sport of rally as well, as rear-drive cars look particularly spectacular as they slide through the gravel.
For now, Bailey says, “I’m grateful that so many people (organizers and volunteers) are willing to let me chuck my car around in the woods.” For 2015, the plan is more ambitious. “We’re going to win the two-wheel drive class,” he says, “that’s our goal.”
“Yeah, sure,” Shtyrin ribs, “As long as we don’t drive off too many cliffs.”
You can cheer on their efforts at the Pacific Forest Rally, which will be broadcast on TSN.
We’d wish them full steam ahead, but that’d be all wrong — more like maximum speed sideways, gents.
And watch out for those cliffs.