California Rally Series Championship Heats up at the Gorman Ridge Rally

Los Angeles – The Gorman Ridge Rally celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary August 23 as the penultimate round of the California Rally Series (CRS) Championship. The event is the closest rally to the Los Angeles metropolitan area, located in the Hungry Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Park, which makes it convenient for both competitors and spectators alike. This year features over forty-four miles of twisty, challenging stages that will keep teams competing from the morning to well after sunset.

Twenty-two teams are scheduled to take the start. Open class is dominated by Subarus as usual, with five of them expected to be duking it out for the overall win. Todd McAllister, the current points leader in Open class, will be hoping to extend his lead over Kris Psara, who is fresh off a double win at the Mendocino Rally last month. Expected to be trading stage times with the points leaders are the consistent John Trucks, who is a close third in the standings, veteran Doug Chernis, who took the Open class victory here in 2011, and newcomer David Ault, who showed impressive speed at Mendocino, his first event as a driver. With this tight competition, Open class promises to provide lots of excitement on Saturday.

In the small displacement, two-wheel drive CRS-2 class, Markus and Alicia Saarinen will be the ones to watch in their Mini Cooper. The team swept class wins during both days of the Idaho Rally, and pulled off a first place on Saturday and a second place on Sunday at Mendocino. This momentum could help them extend their lead in the CRS-2 class. They face competition from the father/son team of Bret and Doug Robinson, competing in a VW Golf. The Robinsons are traditionally very fast, but some mechanical issues plagued their car at the Idaho Rally. Hopefully the gremlins have been sorted and they have a clean run at Gorman.

Husband and wife team Tony Chavez and Raquel Salas have been dominating the two-wheel drive production based Performance Stock (P-Stock) class all season in their VW Golf. They hope to extend their winning streak at Gorman this weekend. Rumor has it the team is building a new car in order to step up to CRS-2 next season, so they have eyes on clinching this class championship before moving on.

In its 25^th year, the Gorman Ridge Rally is based in Lebec, CA, located just one hour north of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The rally features 44 miles of hard-packed dirt stages located within the Hungry Valley Off-Road Vehicle park. For more information on the Gorman Ridge Rally visit http://gormanridgerally.com/.

The California Rally Series is the premier performance rally championship in the southwestern United States. The Series incorporates events from various sanctioning bodies in order to create a meaningful regional championship for its members. The Series celebrates more than 35 continuous years of performance rally, making it the longest running rally series in the United States. To learn more about the California Rally Series visit www.californiarallyseries.com and follow @crspress on twitter.