Andrew Comrie-Picard

Andrew Comrie-Picard in-car hosting in 2015 Ford F-150

(from left) Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Andrew Comrie-Picard, and Greg Biffle test Comrie-Picard's rally car at Team O'Neil Rally School 2014

Andrew Comrie-Picard (born April 28, 1971) is an X Games athlete,^[1] professional race car driver, stunt driver, automotive journalist, and TV personality.^[2] He left a career as a New York City entertainment lawyer to pursue his passion for racing. He has won events in Europe and North America, including the 2006 Sno*Drift Rally in Michigan,^[3] the 2007 Rallye Perce-Neige in Quebec,^[4] the 2009 Rally Colorado, and the 2010 Oregon Trail Rally. In 2008 he won outright the Modern division of the Targa Newfoundland road rally in the competition debut of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X, repeating the win in 2012. He won the 2009 North American Rally Cup championship overall in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX.

Comrie-Picard competed in the inaugural rally car event at X Games 12 in 2006, and competed again at X Games 13 in 2007, X Games 14 in 2008, X Games 15 in 2009, and X Games 16 in 2010, making him one of four drivers (with Tanner Foust, Travis Pastrana, and Ken Block) to compete at the first five X Games where Rally Car Racing was featured. At X Games 16 he won the bronze medal in Rally Car Racing.

He also has raced off-road trucks^[5] and in 2010 he competed in drifting, driving the Dodge Motorsports BFGoodrich Samuel Hubinette Racing Dodge Viper.^[6] Also in 2010, he entered the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb event where he crashed his Mitsubishi at Engineer's Corner.^[7] In 2011, after several seasons of rallying in the top-level AWD category, Comrie-Picard returned to rally competition in the 2WD category, campaigning a 2011 Scion xD in selected Rally America events. He also drove a Mark IV Toyota Supra to second place in the Modern division at Targa Newfoundland, after coming in sixth in the same car in 2010. He competed on the Baja 1000 desert race in 2011 and 2013 in a Class 10 Baja Challenge buggy for BFGoodrich; he and his team won the class in 2013. In 2012 and 2013 he continued to drive for Scion in Rally America competition,^[8] finishing 2nd in the 2WD category championship in both seasons. He also competed in the 2012 and 2013 Pikes Peak International Hillclimb with a version of the Scion xD. Coming off the successful 3-year development program with the Scion Rally Team, in January 2014 “ACP” moved over to Ford Racing and Team O’Neil, driving a Ford Fiesta ST developed by M-Sport to compete for the 2014 Rally America 2WD Championship.^[9] In July 2014, he secured the 2014 Rally America 2WD Championship with two events remaining, and in the 2014 season took five firsts, two seconds, and a third. He also secured seventeen consecutive podiums 2012-2014, and for only the second time in a decade of Rally America history, put a 2wd car on the overall national podium.^[10]

Unusual for an automotive expert, he has five university degrees, including a B.A. from The University of Trinity College (University of Toronto), an M.A. from Trinity College, Oxford, and MBA and LL.B. (law) degrees from McGill University. He was a competitive rower at both Oxford and McGill.

In 1992 Comrie-Picard was appointed the Scribe, or head, of the Episkopon society at Trinity College, Toronto. Comrie-Picard took the society underground by disassociating with the College in 1992, after the administration demanded that Episkopon develop a constitution and Comrie-Picard refused. He told the Globe and Mail newspaper, "It's humour."^[11]

He is a wine expert who worked in Bordeaux, France, ran the wine societies at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford, and competed on the Oxford University Blind Winetasting team.

His acting and television hosting centres on automobiles: he has co-hosted the Canadian Rally Championship on the CHUM and A-Channel networks, Targa Newfoundland on SpeedTV and Rogers Cable, hosted the reality show "War of the Wheels" on Global Television, and was an "extreme auto" correspondent for The New Drivers' Seat TV on CHUM and A-Channel. He co-hosted with car designer Chip Foose and fabricator Lou Santiago a show for the Discovery Channel called "Ultimate Car Buildoff". Ten episodes aired in the summer of 2010. In 2011, Comrie-Picard hosted a special called BattleXross on SpeedTV in which he sets up a stunt course for two top extreme drivers to compete on. The show aired several times in late 2011. In 2013 he hosted a series of Yahoo!Autos videos,^[12] and in 2014 he has hosted a GranTurismo6 launch segment^[13] and co-hosted Ford's Truth About Trucks video series. Comrie-Picard was a Consulting Producer for several seasons of Top Gear USA on the History Channel and appears as a stunt driver in recent Tyler Perry and Arnold Schwarzenegger films^[14] He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Canadian Rally Championship Results

He currently ranks 21st in lifetime points, with 1340pts.^[15]

Complete Rally America results

References

1. ↑ http://espn.go.com/action/athletes/bio?id=40136[]
2. ↑ http://www.driversseattv.com/bio_corr.html
3. ↑ http://www.subaru-msm.com/global/local2006/ranc/1.html
4. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-15. Retrieved 2009-08-25. 
5. ↑ http://www.superlitechampionship.com/Testimonials.html
6. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2010-05-29. Retrieved 2010-05-27. 
7. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=601-6eKQ99U
8. ↑ http://www.automobilemag.com/features/news/this-turbocharged-scion-xd-is-heading-to-a-rally-stage-near-you-199295/
9. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-01-27. Retrieved 2014-01-18. 
10. ↑ http://rally-america.com/news/entry/andrew-comrie-picard-wins-lake-superior-performance-rally-2wd-class
11. ↑ Mitchell, Alanna, "The tumult over Episkopon Is the student society at venerable Trinity College guilty of offensive human-rights abuses? Or is this another sanctimonious outcry from the prissy ranks of the politically correct?" Globe and Mail, September 05, 1992, p. D5.
12. ↑ https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/open-road/top-five-sleeper-cars-video-205832307.html
13. ↑ http://adage.com/article/cat-creativity-and-technology/sony-playstation-rebuilds-mario-andretti-s-car-love-gran-turismo-6/245545/
14. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2467554/.
15. ↑ http://www.rallyracingnews.com/cars/cnddrvlt-08.html

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Andrew Comrie-Picard.

• Official website