Paris. Dakar. Maine? Rally racing hits US

First comes the sound – the wail of a redlined engine – from beyond the trees. And then, the fury: a Subaru WRX slashes into view, going airborne off a low jump as it passes by on the narrow dirt track.

It scatters stones when it lands, then slides into a hard turn. Brake lights flash even as the driver accelerates, using left-foot braking as he goes "flat to the mat" with the gas.

A cloud of dust. A one- minute wait. Repeat. This time it's a Mitsubishi Evo. The crowd at the recreation area responds as it might to a particularly pleasing burst of fireworks.

Mention rally racing and most Americans summon up an aerial image of a roll-caged Mad Max monstrosity coursing through the dunes between Paris and Dakar, Senegal. But this is Mexico – Mexico, Maine – and a special exhibition stage of the Maine Forest Rally, one of some 20 marquee rally events sanctioned each year by Rally America, one of the sport's two governing bodies.

This year, the 12-year-old rally is also a qualifying event for ESPN's X Games – held in Los Angeles Aug. 3–6. For the first time, auto rally is a featured sport as promoters court a broadening demographic: the young and extreme, raised on dirtbikes and trick skateboarding – as both live-action participants and via PlayStation2.

American driver Travis Pastrana – an X Games star in motocross and set to drive a Subaru Impreza for the rally at the Games – has already attained hero status among young fans, who track him down here for autographs.

The sport has other giants: Scotsman Colin McRae is an international legend. (Many of rally's older, more affluent US fans follow European racers.) Rhys Millen has become a specialist in "drifting," a controlled oversteer technique that sends cars sliding sideways. (He did some of the driving in the latest "Fast and the Furious" sequel.)

New stars are emerging. "Americans have a huge interest in motor sports across the board," says Tim Penasack, president of Wazoo Motor Sports Marketing in Nashua, N.H.; consultant to Rally- America; and a longtime rally driver. "We're tying in to the extreme side, and we have high expectations."

But it's unclear whether rally can become a mainstream spectator sport in a country that loves its oval tracks. Rallying is complex. Co-drivers read "stage notes" with hieroglyph-like annotations (called "tulips") and bark coded messages to their drivers. Scoring involves arriving neither too late nor too early during "transit" stages between timed runs – which are stop-for-nothing affairs (unless you need to crawl out and right your car). A rally can run hundreds of miles and cross national borders; this one in Maine included about 95 miles of speed stages with nearly 200 miles of timed transits between them.

And the sport can also be difficult to spectate. It can mean camping out in snow to watch single cars fly past at intervals, then driving half an hour for another glimpse, in the dark.

"I don't think we can snatch the NASCAR crowd," says J.B. Niday, managing director of Rally America and its liaison to the X Games. "I think we've got to build our own fan base, [although] there are going to be some people who are going to be fans of [both]."

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