All of those twisted-up prop shafts represent the development issues of a new race car. A race team, at some point, has to let go of Old Reliable and move on to a new car. There are many reasons for this, be it technical advantage, a major change, or in certain situations, because the rules say so. This isn’t normally greeted with open arms…in fact, it can be a cause for a sick feeling in the bottom of stomachs across the board. One of the more famous cases where moving on bit a team in the ass is Richard Petty. His 1973 Dodge Charger NASCAR served him very well throughout 1977, but the next body he used, a Dodge Magnum, was so problematic that he made a leap into Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles, and the last Mopar he tried, a Dodge Mirada at the personal request of Lee Iacocca, was too slow to keep pace in a race. That last footnote sent the king to Buick, and later Pontiac, for the remainder of his career as a driver.

The Subaru Rally Team USA is in a similar situation, with the WRX STi having been redesigned for 2015. Naturally, new cars had to be built, improvements made, and testing had to be performed in order to prove that the cars were ready for racing. Testing can produce a lot of results, but ultimately, the racetrack is where it all matters and if things fail there, it is back to the drawing board. In this case, failures that did not crop up during testing kicked the team in the junk during racing. Watch below and see how Subaru Rally Team USA went from testing to breakage, and how they coped, fixed, and raced some more.