Perhaps You're Wondering How Brian Deegan Stacks Up To The World's Best Racers

The “Race Of Champions” is a made-for-TV event which purports to pit the world’s best drivers head-to-head using a variety of vehicles on an indoor stadium course. This year’s event was won by up-and-coming WRC pilot Sebastien Ogier (for the individual event) and the rather formidable team of Sebastian Vettel and M. Schumacher (for the Nations Cup).

Whom did the United States send? Well, we sent our very best — Travis Pastrana and Brian Deegan. How’d they do? Well, Pastrana’s gone as far as the second round in the past, but this time it was all bad news for the Americans. How badly did they get beaten? Click the jump to find out…

“Group C” pitted Mr. Deegan against two former F1 World Champions and some dude from Finland. Naturally, he lost. His best lap was seven seconds slower than Button’s: an eternity on a one-minute course.

Michael SCHUMACHER 3 GER 01:12.9251

“Group A” was Travis Pastrana vs. touring-car superstar Andy Priaulx (basically a European Scott Pruett), former F1 driver David Coulthard, and A1GP prodium finisher Filipe Alberquerque.

Andy PRIAULX 3 GBR 01:09.8853

A word of caution: you can’t compare the Group times across Groups. Andy Priaulx is not three seconds better than Schumacher, and Pastrana may not be four seconds better than Deegan.

Let’s face it: had Deegan and Pastrana won, it would have made the “Miracle On Ice” look like a 4-to-3 bet. Which raises the question: why, exactly, are freestyle motocrossers/ARCA backmarkers representing the United States in the ROC? Jimmie Johnson’s gone before, but to my knowledge, nobody’s ever reached out to top American SCCA, NASA, or Grand-Am racers. I’d like to suggest Ryan Eversley and Taylor Hacquard. These two guys are fast, reliable, and solid under pressure. Plus, they are both very telegenic.

If the ROC people want an “extreme racer”, why not choose Tyler Wolfson? He’s gone from kicking my ass in Skip Barber races to a solid series of outstanding performance in both race and drifting series. No matter which one of these guys the ROC picks, I can tell you one thing: they won’t be seven seconds off the pace.