Travis Pastrana Proves He's No Brat By Jumping One On A Frozen Lake

Travis Pastrana stays very busy, and if you want to see what he's doing, watch this video. While the highlight is the Subaru Brat jump at the end, he also competes in a nighttime time, speed, distance (TSD) rally, testing tires on a frozen lake, and breaking in an engine for his Subaru WRX rally car.

Pastrana starts things off by taking part in the Buffum Night Rally TSD. These events challenge a driver and co-driver to complete each segment of a course in a specified time at a specified average speed. To make this one more challenging, it takes place on rural roads, participants can't have a real map, and there's no cell phone coverage.

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Pastrana jokes that he and his co-driver are going to get lost and come in last place. However, they end up with a top ten finish.

Next, Pastrana goes to a frozen lake to test snow tires for his Nitro RX rallycross Subaru. He's initially quite nervous because he feels like there's a risk of falling through the ice.

Pastrana's original plan for the Brat stunt was to do the jump and then a 360 while continuing to drive forward. However, the little Subaru doesn't have much power and its skinny tires get good traction on the ice. Pastrana is eventually able to complete a spin, but he doesn't seem happy with the result. Instead, things shift to just doing the jump.

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Before that can happen, Pastrana has more racing work to do. His stage rally Subaru has a new engine, so he does runs up and down a 3-mile course to make sure the powerplant isn't going to blow up.

After a whole lot of preparation, it's finally time for the Brat jump. The car is stock other than a roll hoop over the cab in case things go wrong. This 1984 example would have a 1.8-liter boxer four-cylinder making just 73 horsepower (54 kilowatts). With so little power, Pastrana only barely makes it to the landing pad.

The Subaru Brat was the brand's entry into the compact truck segment. Since it wasn't made in America, Subie put a pair of seats in the back to avoid the classification as a pickup, avoiding the infamous 25-percent "Chicken Tax" on imported trucks. They had selectable all-wheel drive. Depending on the model year, the power came from either a 1.6-liter or 1.8-liter naturally aspirated boxer four-cylinder.