ATTENTION NEWS AND AUTOMOTIVE EDITORS
ACP puts on extreme show at X Games

LOS ANGELES, CA (August 7, 2006) - Canadian rally driver Andrew "ACP" Comrie-Picard and his grassroots team showed the world just how extreme car racing can be at the first ever X Games rally this past week in Los Angeles.

The driver set competitive times on the rally's individual stages, including the "big air" Super Special Stage in the Home Depot Center in urban Los Angeles. But a misstep in the mountainous desert terrain north of Los Angeles put the team out of medal contention.

"It was a classic rally 'off,'" said Comrie-Picard. "We were sliding around a banked corner when the tail dug in and the front of the car popped over the edge."p>

The team ended up with their Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV stuck in a gully some 150-feet (50 metres) below the road, on a flat tire. At first it looked bleak, but there was a definite upside to the situation in a competition where big drama is the main attraction for fans.

"Trust Andrew to slide off the road when a media helicopter was overhead and another camera from a mountaintop was trained on us" said co-driver, Marc Goldfarb. "Certainly we can't tell any fibs about what happened!"p>

The "off" got heavy coverage on the X Games rally broadcast on ESPN and ABC networks, and an on-camera interview of Comrie-Picard focused on the never-quit attitude that makes rally car racing such a compelling sport.

The team changed the tire and found a place to rejoin the road by jumping a bank about one quarter of a mile back on the road.

"You do what you have to," said Comrie-Picard, "and you never, never quit."p>

The team had been pegged as medal contenders at the X Games after a terrific performance the previous weekend at the Maine Forest Rally, where they qualified to enter the Los Angeles contest. Comrie-Picard had set stage times faster than Travis Pastrana, the eventual winner of the X Games rally over World Rally Championship legend Colin McRae.

"Andrew was on fire at Maine," said crew chief Francois Veillieux, "but we showed up at the X Games a week later with the same car and the same setup only to find that the competition had upped their game considerably."p>

Only 12 drivers were invited to compete at the inaugural X Games rally. Comrie-Picard finished between Hollywood stunt drivers Rhys Millen and Tanner Foust, the pair who drove the cars in the films The Dukes of Hazzard and The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift. On the final Super Special, the three set the track on fire and had the audience on the edge of their seats as they drifted their cars in front of the TV cameras that framed the X Games broadcast to 190 million viewers -- over a million of them for the live rally portion. "This is such a fantastic opportunity for rally racing and for the teams competing in the championship," said Comrie-Picard. "And for us, it's a great chance to be on the leading edge as this growing sport gains new fans in North America."p>

Comrie-Picard's Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV was prepared with the generous assistance of the Losier family at Boisvert Mitsubishi in Blainville, Que. He was co-driven by Marc Goldfarb.

British-Columbia-based board game maker Headz Gamez International is a key supporter of this grassroots Canadian team in their X Games effort. Comrie-Picard has been proud to display the "Griddly Headz" brand on his competition car for this event.

Special thanks also to Slowboy Racing, Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada, Yokohama Canada, Sherwin-Williams and Vibrant Performance for joining ACP and his crew at the last minute to help get them to the X Games.

The team is now planning its next steps, and Comrie-Picard says he's optimistic about a new partnership that will see them take on the rest of the season.

For an insider's look at the team's X Games experience, visit www.flatovercrest.com and click on the link to "ACP's X Games journal." ACP accepted an invitation by the site's editors to document his experience on the popular rally webzine and thousands of fans clicked through all week to follow the story.

ABOUT THE DRIVER: The Edmonton-born Andrew Comrie-Picard is running a season of selected events in the United States and Canada in 2006. The privateer won the U.S. season-opener in February, over the factory-supported Subaru Rally Team USA. When he isn't racing, Comrie-Picard is the co-host of the 2006 Canadian Rally Championship broadcast, airing nationwide this fall on the Chum network. He is also the host of the Global TV show War of the Wheels, airing now on Prime. The Alberta-born, British Columbia-raised Comrie-Picard now lives in Toronto.

ABOUT RALLY CAR RACING: Rally car racing is considered the extreme sport of automobile racing and is often described simply as "real cars, real roads, real fast." This all-season motorsport sees drivers and their co-drivers take modified road cars to the limit as they achieve blistering speeds over courses that cover more than 100 kilometres of gravel, dirt or snow-covered roads.

THANKS TO: Headz Gamez International (www.griddlyheadz.com),
Yokohama Canada (www.yokohama.ca),
Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada (www.mitsubishimotors.ca),
Slowboy Racing (www.slowboyracing.com),
Vibrant Performance (www.vibrantperformance.com),
Sherwin-Williams Automotive Finishes (www.sherwin-automotive.com),
Inside Track Motorsport News (www.insidetracknews.com),
DMS North America (www.dmsnorthamerica.com)

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Andrew Comrie-Picard
416-882-5253 / musketeerracing@yahoo.com
PHOTOS: Canadian ACP and Mark Goldfarb take on the X Games Rally in Los Angeles.