SPOILER: 2008 Race of Champions crowns new king among motorsport's best
Click above for high-res gallery from the 2008 Race of Champions
Yesterday marked the running of the 2008 Race of Champions, an annual event that hosts the world's best drivers from NASCAR, F1, WRCC, LeMans racing and every other legitimate form of four-wheeled competition in the world. The purpose is to race these pilots against each other on an identical track in identical vehicles to find out both which country produces the fastest drivers and which driver is the fastest them of all. This year's arsenal of autos included the KTM X-Bow, Abarth 500 Assetto Corso, 2008 Ford WRC Focus, RX 150 and purpose-built RoC buggy.
Follow the jump for a rundown of the winners and losers as well as video highlights, and check out some great pics of yesterday's action in the gallery below.
Gallery: 2008 Race of Champions
The 2008 RoC was once against held at Wembley Stadium in the UK, but unlike last year and the year before, the fastest man alive was not DTM champion Mattias Ekstrom. The two-time RoC champ was surprisingly knocked out in the semi-finals. Another surprising elimination was that of Michael Schumacher, who was shown the door by none other than NASCAR's Carl Edwards in the second round. Schumacher, however, did drive live up to his god-like reputation during the competition for the RoC Nations Cup, which he and partner Sebastian Vettel won on behalf of Germania.
Runner up David Coulthard and 2008 RoC Champion Sebastian Loeb
In the end it came down to a best-of-three series between five-time WRC Champion Sebastian Loeb and F1 great David Coulthard. We happened to catch the final battle being live-streamed on Freecaster.tv and were glad we did. Loeb eeked out the championship in the end, but it took him all three races to do it against the formidable Coulthard.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Berto 8:19AM (12/15/2008)
Very good race.
I would love to tear up a track in a KTM X-Bow...
On another note: is it just me or does the blonde on the front row (Left side) of pic 11 have a very weird eye?
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means98 8:25AM (12/15/2008)
I knew Loeb was gonna win it. However, i wasnt suspecting Schumacher would be ousted by a NASCAR driver....
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VP 9:07AM (12/15/2008)
Why because somebody who drives in NASCAR isn't a real driver?
Chase 9:24AM (12/15/2008)
VP: Those were exactly the words I was looking for...
Pat 9:54AM (12/15/2008)
to VP and Chase - It's not that NASCAR drivers aren't real drivers (although I suspect some of them aren't), it's more that in a competition that involves both left and right turns, you don't expect someone who races in a series with 99% left turns to do well.
Ian 10:14AM (12/15/2008)
Talent shines through in this series. See Edwards for an example (Michael did not look happy). But overall the format and the cars suit the professional rally drivers. Not much one can do about it in an arena type format.
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AZZO45b 1:17PM (12/15/2008)
Agreed. Tanner Faust (sp?) beat Jenson Button in one stage.
Paul M. Watson 8:36AM (12/15/2008)
Anyone else find the advert-break after every race format highly annoying?
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Adil 8:50AM (12/15/2008)
Honnestly autoblog, did you hire a bunch of Pakistanis to write your articles? all the recent ones are full of ridiculous typos/misspellings...
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TwoSixMike 9:08AM (12/15/2008)
i⋅ro⋅ny [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
–noun, plural -nies.
1. See above.
Ian 10:30AM (12/15/2008)
1) Racial slur!
2) Re "all" at the start of a sentence, please use "A"
Gungosa 12:48PM (12/15/2008)
I agree, and in the poster's defense, we're not paid to convey our thoughts effectively through type. This article was very difficult to read. The content was also pretty confusing. The typos were just the final nail in the coffin. Hopefully this new editor will actually do some editing before allowing mediocre content.
Mr_Pie 9:49AM (12/15/2008)
good race. but is it just me or did the ktms look kinda slow and boring? i mean by the looks of it it was very understeery, and if they were all oversteering and drifting around corners, i would have found it more interesting, even though i know itd be slower.
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Metar 9:51AM (12/15/2008)
The collection of world-class drivers here is amazing, and I think Loeb is a deserving champion. He proved himself to be the Schumacher, or Rossi, of Rallying, and has shown promising pace in Formula 1 testing.
Some amazing races in the Nations cup, too, and Schumacher absolutely dominated the last heat in the buggies. Vettel proved his point too in the X-Bow.
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Travis Rassat 10:59AM (12/15/2008)
This was the first time I've watched the ROC, and I thought it was a lot of fun. I do have one dumb question - who are the passengers in the cars? Are they ordinary people who won a chance to ride along or something?
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aba 12:13PM (12/15/2008)
I was at the race and noticed that most of the accidents involed the x-bow. It seemed to me that the car has some under-steering problems. what do you guys think?
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Tagg 1:09PM (12/15/2008)
Maybe I'm in the minority here but I feel if you are a good driver in your series that you're probably a pretty good driver period. Racing no matter the type takes the same basic skills like car control, tire managment etc. all to varying degrees. So the number of turns, the type of car really doesn't matter if you are talented.
On a side note I used to like the old IROC series when they ran on the ovals and road courses. That was always a lot of fun to watch the Trans Am drivers, NASCAR drivers and Indycar drivers run on the mix of courses.
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why not the LS2LS7? 1:22PM (12/15/2008)
This series crowns a king of auto racing like the SAP Tennis Open crowns a king of tennis.
It is an invitation, pay for appearance event.
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Joe 2:19PM (12/15/2008)
Forget F1 and all those other races..I knew Loeb was going to win, I have been following him in the Rally world all year, that man can drive! No boo-hoos here that the golden boy of open wheel didn't win because the golden boy of rally did win.
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IOMTT 6:23PM (12/15/2008)
I would like to see one event added to RoC. Since I have seen a few two wheeled stars participate, we need a two wheeled event. Maybe a SuperMoto style dual surface race with some jumps thrown in for good measure. Probably would not happen as too many 4 wheeled stars would get badly hurt.
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