Skip to main content

Watching Red Bull Global Rallycross is like witnessing a real-life Mad Max chase

It’s a sad fact that all automobile racing eventually becomes boring, or at least boring to watch. Any given auto racing series starts out raw, wild, and uncomplicated, and then we fence it in and domesticate it. So unless you’re actually driving, most racing can be a snooze fest.

The craziest part is, we in the racing community do this to ourselves. Racers create new rules to take away someone else’s competitive advantage or to control costs. But the result is always the same: races become foregone conclusions; parades of cars circulating for hours with a caution flag raised every time things might get interesting. There may be some real racing action at the start or in the last lap of the race, but that’s usually about it.

Even drifting, which was supposed to be the bad boy motorsport of our time, couldn’t escape. They have panels of judges who deduct points for errors and decide if they like a driver’s style. Drifting has essentially become the figure skating competition of the automotive world. Wake me when it’s over, OK?

All this has led to the brilliant development of Global Rallycross. The idea here is simple: you take a bunch of insanely overpowered cars and put them on a short, tight course that folds back on itself so every fan can see the whole race. The track has dirt sections and paved sections and even a jump or two, and they don’t worry about incidental contact between cars. They give the drivers five or ten laps for an all-out sprint, and it’s over in 5 to 10 minutes. It’s like a chase scene from a Mad Max movie, only it’s real.

“Short races, lots of action, and dynamic cars,” three-time Red Bull Global Rallycross champion Scott Speed said. “When you see a picture of a Rallycross car going through a corner sideways and gravel coming off the back it, it looks fast. You see a car going through the air, four wheels off the ground, sideways with another car next to it, it just captures great action. The cars speak for themselves.”

“I like the chaos of it all,” Speed’s Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross teammate Tanner Foust said. “The jumps are huge. In Atlantic City, the jump was 200 feet and the car handles that like a Baja truck.”

Chaos is a ladder

Chaos and incredibly close racing is what brings in the fans. In a GRC race, the cars are never more than a few feet apart, and typically much closer than that in the corners. But it’s more than creating an action-packed race you can watch on your phone during the commercial break for a NASCAR caution period.

Red Bull GRC has mastered the media challenge, making use of social media as well as TV to get its product in front of a wider audience.

 

“Rallycross has got the best future,” Speed declared. “Driving these cars is what people are going to want to see. For me, this is the coolest form of racing because my stepson is in junior high school, and all his friends like Rallycross and relate to it. I feel like this is fun for once.”

“We got excited because we thought it was a neat series to get involved with, and it’s been great,” Michael Andretti, owner and CEO of Andretti Autosport and team principal of Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross, said. As a veteran of Indy cars, Formula One, and Le Mans, Andretti has a keen sense of the business of racing. “It’s been a great partnership with Volkswagen and it’s been great for our brand,” Andretti continued. “We’re getting in front of millenials, which is quite important. We’re out there to race, so this is the perfect series for us to get involved with.”

No-nonsense race cars

A Global Rallycross car is a simple thing. There are two classes: Supercars and Lites. Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross works with VW in Germany to build Supercars for the series. Although the car is nominally a VW Beetle, you won’t find much in common with a street car. It starts as a Beetle, but a roll structure is added to stiffen the chassis. The engine is a turbocharged 2.0-liter VW engine pumped up to 560 horsepower, with a 6-speed sequential shift transmission, locked all-wheel-drive, and hand-operated turning brakes. The suspension is rally-style and capable of absorbing tremendous punishment, including jumps. The radiator is located in the back, and the body panels can be removed in seconds to repair damage.

A Global Rallycross Supercar can hit 60 MPH in under two seconds. That’s quicker than a Formula One car or any exotic you want to name.

GRC Supercars from other brands are essentially similar, but with their own engines and chassis designs, so you get a true manufacturer’s challenge to create winning cars.

But what you don’t find in these cars is even more important. You don’t find any driver assistance like traction controls or anti-lock brakes. Everyone uses the same BFGoodrich racing tires. About the only concession to tech is the launch control system, which holds the engine speed at optimum for a good launch. You can only use it for a fraction of a second once the race is started, however, and the driver is still responsible for the clutch and throttle.

With all that, a Global Rallycross Supercar is capable of hitting 60 MPH in under two seconds. That’s quicker than a Formula One car or any exotic you want to name. It’s quicker than the 840-horsepower Dodge Challenger Demon. There’s a top speed somewhere north of 100 MPH, but the cars won’t see that speed because the courses are so short.

“The car is a freak,” Foust insisted. “It’s just a hyperactive little … beast of a machine.” I suspect he had a different word in mind, but Rallycross is a family sport. “A lot of people don’t equate a Beetle with a beast, but it is. They’re incredibly twitchy on the steering and the brakes are hyper-sensitive. They’re just awesome machines to drive.”

Larry Chen / Red Bull Content Pool
Larry Chen / Red Bull Content Pool

In addition to the Supercars, the GRC Lites provide a second run group. These are identical purpose-built tube-frame racing cars with a naturally-aspirated 2.4-liter engine producing 310 horsepower. Like the Supercars, the Lites use a six-speed sequential gearbox and full-time locked AWD. A GRC Lites car will do the 0-60 run in about 2.5 seconds.

I took a demonstration ride in a Lites car at the Red Bull GRC season finale. Olsbergs MSE X Forces team driver Scott Anderson was kind enough to host me for a couple of laps in the No. 77 Racing 4 Detroit/Hull & Knarr machine, and the experience was exhilarating rather than frightening. The acceleration is enough to push you back in your seat, and every corner was an adventure in G forces.

Rallycross is like a chase scene Mad Max movie, only it’s real.

The challenge for a GRC driver is getting the power to the ground, and drifting sideways around every corner is not optional nor optimal. These cars rotate easily, which helps get them pointed where you want them to go.

Handling the transition from pavement to dirt and back again is mostly a matter of modulating throttle so you don’t dig yourself a hole. Taking the big table jump was so easy that you had to listen for it rather than feel it.

It was a perfect couple of laps. But we were by ourselves on track, and any race driver knows that running a perfect lap by yourself is one thing, but it’s quite another when you’ve got competitors an inch from your paint on all sides.

Jump on Sunday, sell on Monday?

Automakers have gone all-in for Global Rallycross. Volkswagen is winning the series, Subaru is there in force, and both Honda and Ford were well represented. Subaru has dominated American Performance Rally for a decade with drivers like Travis Pastrana, Ken Block, and David Higgins. Subaru Rally Team USA is also in Global Rallycross with Chris Atkinson and Patrik Sandell, both accomplished rally drivers in their own right.

Volkswagen has been dominant in Red Bull GRC since 2015. Scott Speed claimed his third consecutive championship in Los Angeles on October 14, with teammate Foust finishing second for the year, and Volkswagen took home its second consecutive manufacturer’s title in the series.

Three-time Supercar race winner, Patrik Sandell (Subaru Rally Team USA) watches race replays at Red Bull Global Rallycross in Los Angeles, CA, USA on 14 October 2017. Larry Chen / Red Bull Content Pool
Three-time Supercar race winner, Patrik Sandell, and the Subaru Rally Team USA crew watch race replays at Red Bull Global Rallycross in Los Angeles, CA, USA on 14 October 2017. Larry Chen / Red Bull Content Pool

“It’s a very successful race tournament for us,” Volkswagen Group of America President and CEO Hinrich Woebcken, who had flown directly to the GRC finals from Germany, said. “We like the way this racing is transported into social media and TV, so it’s a very effective marketing initiative. It’s bringing young people into the brand.”

Even before Speed delivered the season championship, Volkswagen was already having a great year. With annual sales increases and a bunch of interesting new cars coming down the line in the next few months, the company has largely put its diesel-related woes in the rearview mirror. Rallycross is helping the German automaker craft an exciting new image for itself.

An electric future

Red Bull Global Rallycross has a winning formula for our era, with bite-size heat races heavy on action featuring popular makes and models. But virtually everyone I spoke to at the event mentioned a coming conversion to electric power before I even asked.

“Everything’s going electric and that’s no surprise,” Speed said. “The manufacturers have made that very clear; all of them. We’re just speculating on the when and where. But everything is going to go that way and Rallycross is the best avenue where manufacturers will go. So I think this is the future of American racing.”

Andretti is a bit more guarded, but not in doubt about the direction. His Andretti Autosport teams already includes an electric Formula E team, so the transition is underway.

“I think electric’s going to become part of it, eventually,” he said, “and I think Rallycross is a perfect series for electric racing. But I think Rallycross is going to be around for a long time because it’s great racing.”

Jeff Zurschmeide
Jeff Zurschmeide is a freelance writer from Portland, Oregon. Jeff covers new cars, motor sports, and technical topics for a…
The week in EV tech: From sky-high dreams to ground-level drama
tesla robotaxi feud alef in transition flight

Welcome to Digital Trends’ weekly recap of the revolutionary technology powering, connecting, and now driving next-gen electric vehicles. 
Buckle up, folks — this week we’re taking off with a look at the futuristic dream of flying electric cars possibly gliding above U.S. roads sooner than you think. But before we get carried away, let’s bring it back down to the bumpy road of present-day realities.
Even if you’re mostly interested about the tech powering the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, it’s become increasingly hard to avoid the politics around it: You guessed it, we’re talking about this week’s public feud between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump.
What does this have to do with EV tech? Well, quite a lot actually. For starters, the technology behind Tesla’s Autopilot and Full-Self Driving (FSD) modes may return in the crosshairs of regulators: Despite the names, these are still driver-assist features that require active driver supervision, and until Trump’s election, they had been under heavy scrutiny by safety regulators for several years.
Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration  (NHTSA) launched an investigation into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD. Big questions remain about the driver-assist system's performance under adverse, yet naturally-occurring conditions such as fog, sun glare, rain, and snow.
When Musk, who spent about $275 million to help elect Trump, was appointed to head a newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), it raised more than a few eyebrows about his power and influence over the regulators who are supposed to oversee traffic safety, and therefore Tesla.
It didn’t help that the Trump administration followed Musk’s recommendations and relaxed crash-reporting requirements put in place since 2021, while also relaxing rules to accelerate the deployment of fully-automated robotaxis.
The Trump/Musk clash takes place just as Tesla is due to launch its robotaxi pilot progam in Texas later this month. While Trump is now threatening to pull billions of dollars in government subsidies and contracts from Musk’s companies, it’s unclear whether he might pressure the Department of Transportation to again tighten the regulatory screws on Tesla. What is clear is that Trump has never been a fan of electric vehicles and is already trying to end federal subsidies on EV purchases and leases. And while he had made a big deal about buying a bright red Tesla Model S back in March, Trump now says he wants to sell it.
Back to the tech
Meanwhile, Tesla is still required to respond to information and data requests from NHTSA regarding the safety of its robotaxis by July 1. And ultimately, it should come down to the performance of the technology.
For Autopilot and FSD, Tesla has opted for less expensive navigational tech relying on multiple onboard cameras that feed AI machine-learning models. But especially for so-called adverse driving conditions, it’s the more expensive technology relying on a blend of pre-mapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar, and lidar (a laser-light radar) which has received the nod of regulators.
Waymo, the sole robotaxi service currently operating in the U.S., and Zoox, Amazon’s upcoming robotaxi service, both use that blend of navigational tech.
For its robotaxis, Tesla is said to have upped its game in terms of autonomous driving with its Hardware 4 (HW4) technology, which does include radar sensors and promises enhanced environmental perception.
Will that be enough for Tesla to convince regulators, catch up with Waymo, or compete effectively with Zoox?
We’ll have to wait and see.
Flying cars
In a recent edition, we noted that while consumer confidence about robotaxi technology is on the rise, most people also want more data before they hop into a self-driving vehicle.
What about flying taxis? According to a recent survey by Honeywell, nearly all U.S. airline fliers, or 98%, said they would consider using a so-called electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, as part of their travel journey.
But while the buzz around flying electric vehicles has mostly focused on air taxis— like Archer Aviation’s Midnight, expected to fly athletes around the 2028 LA Olympics, or Joby’s slick air taxi, backed by Toyota — one California startup is shooting for something a little more... driveable.
Meet Alef Aeronautics, a Bay Area company that wants to put the “car” back in “flying car.” This week, Alef announced it has received over 3,400 pre-orders for its electric flying vehicle, the Model A — and get this: it’s not a futuristic prototype gathering dust in a lab. Alef says production could begin by the end of 2025, or early next year.
On the ground, the Model A operates like a low-speed electric car, complete with hub motors in the wheels and—wait for it—a real steering wheel. You can legally drive it at up to 25 mph on public roads, parking it in a normal garage like any other EV. It’s refreshingly manual in an increasingly hands-free world.
But when it's time for lift off, the steering wheel takes a backseat. For vertical takeoff and flight, the Model A transforms into a drone-like aircraft. Its cabin rotates sideways to create lift, and eight electric rotors—controlled by a flight system and joysticks—take over. No pedals, no yoke, just a bit of joystick magic (or autopilot, if you prefer).
The Model A has already received the nod from regulators for test flights.
While the $300,000 price tag won’t fit everyone’s budget, the company is clearly betting on a future where you don’t have to choose between a car and a flying machine—you can have both.

Read more
8 key things you need to know from Apple’s WWDC 2025 event
From a fresh look and updated names, to new features, more intelligence and live translation
iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 shown on devices.

The WWDC 2025 keynote ran for just over an hour and a half. For those of you who don't fancy sitting through the whole presentation, we've pulled out the key things you need to know from the latest Apple event.

1. Welcome to the 26 club

Read more
Tesla’s robotaxi service is almost here, but it’s not the car you want to see
Silver Tesla Model Y Juniper side

Tesla chief Elon Musk has said that the automaker is aiming to launch its robotaxi service on June 22, in Austin, Texas.

“Tentatively, June 22,” Musk said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding: “We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift.”

Read more