Rally at X Games 14 wows the crowds [SPOILER ALERT]

Click above for high-res gallery of rally at X Games 14

You can bitch and moan about the X Games version of rally racing being less pure than what you see on WRC, and while there are no trees whizzing by or bottomless pits in which to careen, the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA offered many opportunities for competitors to crash their cars in spectacular fashion. This year's event at X Games 14 was divided between driving on dirt within the stadium and pavement outside with a big jump smack dab in the center of the stadium giving fans the best view of the biggest car-nage.

The most spectacular example of mechanical mayhem from this past weekend's two-hour competition was during the quarterfinals in which Andrew Comrie-Picard didn't quite make the big jump and smacked his rear end on the lip of the receiving ramp, which flipped his car end over end (see above and more in gallery). His competitor at the time, Dave Mirra, who is an X Games alum competing for the first time in a car rather than on a bike, just had to finish to win. He tagged the wall halfway through the race, however, and was forced to finish without being able to turn left.

Find out what happened in the gold medal race, as well video of that race and the Mirra/Comrie-Picard duel after the jump, and view some photos of yesterday's Rally X action in the gallery below.

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[Source: Expn]

The race for X Games gold came down to two familiar names: Travis Pastrana and host of the new Top Gear USA, Tanner Foust. These two met in the gold medal race last year where Pastrana slid into Foust's lane on the last turn to lose the race by disqualification. Sturdier barriers were erected this year to ensure such an anticlimactic ending didn't happen again. Pastrana was also forced to run the race with the late (and great) Colin McCrae's former co-driver after his main shotgun specialist, Jim DeChamp, broke his back in the Moto X Best Trick competition earlier in the X Games. It didn't seem to phase him, as Pastrana was able to avenge last year's loss by running a clean race. Foust would have been right there had he not tapped the wall early on. TP celebrated with some dirt doughnuts and professional gloating on the roof of his Subaru.

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