Day 3 shooting for Puma.

Today we're in the race pits with the Puma Subaru Supercar Rally Cross Team for the X Games finals.

I'd never seen anything like this.

It was a solid 95 degrees at the race track just outside Los Angeles. Next to the stadium is the pit area for all the race teams. It was pure bananas down here. Hot gasoline vapors , deafening engines revving and cracking , armies of mechanics and production crew darting to and fro. It felt like chaos but at a closer look , every move from each team member was absolute surgical precision. It was like being inside a bee hive that makes napalm. Place was incredible !!

SuperCars are prepared in lightening speeds in seering heats. I take my hat off to this road crew !!

RallyCross is massive in Northern Europe. Countries like Norway , Sweden and Great Britain have been pioneering the sport for decades. The cars are basically atom bombs on four wheels. Everything is modified. torqued , turbo charged , zero restrictors anywhere in sight , crazy dumb fast gearboxes , extra flux capacitors and they basically run off pure gasoline and plutonium. These cars go from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds. Thats mental. Whats even more mental is the car stays intact after 60mph ....... sort of !!

The noise in the race camp was like being on a military aircraft carrier during a war.

The Pit controller oversees everything in the hectic minutes the cars return back from the race track.

Cars come back from the 5 lap battle zone literally in pieces. Engines blown , transmissions melted , ejector seats totally ejected. Some cars came back with half the body work gone. Exposing a naked shell. Tires and wheels vaporised in minutes on the hot asphault race course. All pretty standard every half an hour.

In between some races , whole cars were changed out in under 5 minutes. It was like being in the ER of a car hospital on a saturday night. Major surgery and patch ups. I was gobsmacked just watching. Everything moves at lightening speeds. Doing this job with a hangover seems impossible. I wished i'd asked about that ..........

This is Shannon. He takes epic photos of cars. High quality manny here !!

All the press were allowed down onto the arena. Standing next to the guard wall and sort of protective fence was nutso. It was even hotter down here and 10x louder. As the cars hammered by , drifting around the bends , pieces of tire and bodywork would fly in all directions. We all kept ducking when a group of cars would smash along the railings. It was like grenades going off non stop.

Rediculous amounts of horse powers and energy drinks make these cars go hell bent for leather sideways around the track..........Its a good thing i wear glasses. The amount of debris these bastardos kick up is crazy. All kinds of shrapnel hitting me .

But man....... To see the cars blazing by in sixth gear was the bees knees !!

Part 2 - "dude wheres my car?" coming up !