NEWRY, Maine ??” The 16th running of the Maine Forest Rally will take place July 21 and 22 in Mexico, Maine and Berlin, N.H. All racing festivities and staging will occur at Sunday River in Newry, Maine. The Maine Forest Rally represents round five of the Rally America National Championship series as well as the last qualifying round for the 2006 X Games.

The Maine Forest Rally is expected to draw close to 100 competitors from all over North America and the world. Top US drivers, including X Games gold medalist Travis Pastrana and 2005 North American Rally Cup Champion Matt Iorio are expected to compete with other international drivers including Andrew Pinker from Australia, Antoine L’Estage from Canada and Alfredo DeDominicis from Italy for Rally America championship points and entry into the 2006 X Games.

The X Games Rally Car Racing Super Special will take place in Los Angeles at the Home Depot Center and will be shown live on ABC on Saturday, August 5 from 5-6 pm EST.

The Maine Forest Rally will start at Sunday River on Thursday, July 20 with registration, technical inspectional and autograph signing for race fans.

The competitive stages will start on Friday, July 21 from Mexico, Maine. The first stage is a spectator stage in the Mexico Recreation Area, including new for this year – a jump. Competitors will then run 3 more stages with a majority of them finishing at night.

On Saturday, the rally will re-start from the Glen Avenue Park in Berlin, New Hampshire where teams will then transit out to run a number of grueling long stages.

The sport of performance rally racing has the largest live attendance of any other sport in the world. More than one billion people worldwide will attend performance rally races in 2006. Rally racing is a motorsport where teams race against the clock, one at-a-time, on closed roads at the fastest speed possible on stages they have never seen before. Each team is comprised of two people, a driver and a co-driver. The co-driver reads from stage notes and barks out instructions while the driver is negotiating the course at high speed. The team having the lowest cumulative time over the whole event wins. Teams will compete in street legal, but highly prepared cars that are based upon current popular car models such as the Subaru WRX, Mitsubishi EVO, Dodge Neon, Volkswagen Golf, and Mazda 6.

More information on viewing the 2006 Maine Forest Rally along with competitor details are available at the event web site: www.teamoneil.com/maineforestrally. Sunday River is offering lodging packages for race fans starting at $75 per night per room, which is available at www.sundayriver.com or by calling (800) 543-2754.