Travis Pastrana and Rhianon Gelsomino Teach Us the Art of Co-Driving

Car and Driver

a day ago

Colin McRae, Tommi Makinen, Walter Rohrl. Motorsports fans are familiar with those legendary names. But while rally drivers receive the fame and glory, they don't do it alone. Seated beside them as they slide across loose gravel, launch over jumps, and rocket through dense forests are the co-drivers. These underappreciated motorsports heroes allow those brave drivers to navigate tricky rally stages at full speed. To learn more about what it takes to be a co-driver, we talked with Rhianon Gelsomino, co-driver for Subaru's Travis Pastrana, before strapping in next to the American daredevil for a ride through the tight and twisty rally course at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the Subaru WRX ARA25.
There are many paths to becoming a co-driver. Some, like Gelsomino, grow up in a rally-driving family and learn through immersion. "My dad was actually one of Australia's best rally drivers," Gelsomino told us as we waited to clamber into the WRX ARA25. "So I've come up with rally in my life, and my two brothers are rally drivers as well." When her family needed someone to call out the notes for their races, she took the opportunity to ride shotgun.
Others train specifically for the job. Her husband, Alex Gelsomino, served as the late Ken Block's co-driver for 17 years and perfected his skills through a rally co-driver school in Italy as a teenager. Rhianon and Alex now lead a co-driver school through Dirtfish, among the top rally schools in North America. "That's how we encourage co-drivers to start learning the right way," she explained.
Subaru
Rhianon Gelsomino and Travis Pastrana at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Sometimes co-drivers start out behind the wheel before switching to the support role. "A lot of times it would be a driver that runs out of money," Gelsomino said. "With co-driving, you need a suit, helmet, boots, and you can co-drive, whereas the driver needs a car." When drivers begin hitting budgetary constraints in the famously expensive world of motorsports, she suggests they shift their focus. "Learn to be a co-driver, learn what rally is, and then change over to driving when you have the budget," she said. This also helps drivers gain a better perspective of what their co-driver needs to do their job properly.
Although the co-driver doesn't actively steer the car with their hands, they do steer it, in a sense, with their voice, and their ability to communicate quickly and clearly with the driver is critical to a good result. That communication ultimately comes down to building trust between the teammates, as even the smallest mistake at over 100 mph on a narrow rally course can lead to a catastrophic accident.
The first step is simply getting to know one another. "I make sure I learn a lot about them," said Gelsomino. "What car they're driving, what experience they have, what crashes they've had, what note system they use." Before the rally, the driver and co-driver do a reconnaissance drive of the stage at a much slower speed, and the driver takes notes that the co-driver will then read out when they tackle the event at full speed. "If they're not writing good notes, I can't do my job properly either."
Subaru
Before Gelsomino joined Pastrana in the Subaru WRX ARA25 for the American Rally Association, she competed in the World Rally Championship. "I'd learned a lot of things about video analysis and pace notes," she explained. "One big thing I worked on with him is using technology to his advantage." She showed Pastrana the benefit of recording their reconnaissance run, or "recce" as it's known among the competitors. "We record it because then we watch it at double speed together to rehearse the stage after the recce, to simulate it."
Trading knowledge and preparing together is key to solidifying that trust in the car. "When you've done so much work rehearsing, that trust is built," she said. But some of it is also just innate. "We also have very similar personalities, he's like a brother to me. You find a bond," she explained. "Some people you don't, and you don't tend to continue working with them. You spend hours together, so you want to get along with the person, and you want to enjoy it."
The other component to success is ensuring that you're speaking the same language. Every driver has their own style of taking notes. "In America, most drivers who use a one-to-six system, which is one will be a hairpin and a six will be flat out," Gelsomino detailed. "And they'll either say number or a direction: six left or left six, depending on which way they are going." But not everyone follows the same formula. "My brother, who I've done most of my rallies all over the world, he's a one-to-10 system."
Subaru
Then there are the "accessory words," which give the driver extra context on how to set up for the upcoming corner, and the "trigger words" that warn of big adjustments. The former might include "into" to connect a string of tightly packed corners, or "hug" to tell the driver to keep close to the inside of the corner instead of taking a more traditional racing line. The latter covers phrases like "caution, brake, and max flat."
Luckily, when we rode alongside Pastrana on the short Goodwood rally stage, we weren't asked to read out notes. The jovial Pastrana had already completed several runs and was well-versed on the course, all the better since, as we soon discovered, it's quite the challenge to keep up. The launch off the line was violent despite the slick surface underneath, and as the Subaru WRX ARA25 surged forward, its nose pointed skyward, making it hard to judge or position relative to the upcoming turns.
Those corners come at you fast, one after another. Pastrana's hands worked just as fast, whipping the steering wheel left and right, shifting gears, and yanking on the handbrake. The forces on your body are intense, from the grab of the harness under braking to the dramatic squat and dive that the long-travel suspension allows, and the feeling of constantly being sideways yet still going straight. As we scythed through the trees, we tried bracing for the corners ahead and keeping an eye on the narrow dirt route, but everything happened so quickly, we could only just hang on.
The rapid two-and-a-half-minute run up the 1.5-mile course illustrated the impressive skills required of both rally drivers and co-drivers. Not only were we blown away by Pastrana's artful car control, as he chatted casually over the radio with a big grin on his face, but the immense speed demonstrated the challenge of co-driving, thinking several corners ahead, reading out each direction clearly, and timing it perfectly. Rally is truly a team sport, and while the drivers are the ones whose names get plastered onto video game covers, they couldn't do it without their co-driver beside them.
Caleb Miller
Associate News Editor
Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.