So Easy, Even Brian Deegan Can Do It

Disgraceful so-called “pay driving” has been a part of racing since the very beginning. Whether it’s ABBA drummer “Slim” Borgudd’s Formula 1 career, “Malcolm In The Middle” star Frankie Muniz backmarking Formula Atlantic, or even a lame-ass church guitarist driving in Grand-Am, there’s no getting around the fact that the vast majority of people on most racing grids wrote a check to be there.

Ford has a better idea. Instead of letting dentists, attorneys, trust-fund kids, and other no-talent morons pay them to drive their rally cars, they’ve decided to tarnish the already less-than-stellar reputation of rally “racing” by finding the biggest douchebags in the universe and paying them to drive. First it was Tanner Foust, the guy who really, really doesn’t want you to know he’s almost thirty-eight years old. Then it was Ken Block, a fellow best known for having shoes made overseas in conditions that are, ahem, possibly quite terrifying. Where do you go from there?

That’s right! You hire an extreme motorcycle stunter who can’t spell “militia” correctly!

“One thing I am used to is riding dirt bikes,” Deegan said. “I grew up doing it ever since I was eight years old and I feel comfortable there. I went out and won a lot of medals and (then) won at supercross.”

“However there comes a time in your life where you’re like ‘have I done it all, or do I want to take on the next chapter?’ and I saw four-wheels as the next chapter. When the opportunity came through Rockstar and Ford to race rally car at X Games , I was like ‘It sounds pretty cool and I am going to go for it.’ For an athlete who comes from the top of the game to start at the bottom again, it isn’t easy. You have to kill your ego and your confidence is back to where you have to start over and try to learn this as fast as possible. I feel like my technique from dirt bikes and learning how to be the best at a sport has carried over.”

Somebody explain to Deegan that a full factory ride from a major auto manufacturer isn’t “starting at the bottom”, okay? The implications from Ford’s rally strategy are fairly interesting from a business perspective, however; by hiring drivers who are well-known in other fields and turning them into rallyists, the company is implicitly acknowledging that the best publicity to be had from their motorsports ventures has nothing to do with actually winning in those ventures. What if Ford had followed the same strategy for their GT40 program at LeMans, long ago? We could have had Paul McCartney, Andy Warhol, and Ted Kennedy running 220mph down the Mulsanne Straight…