co-driver

The long hiatus / STPR '09

2009-06-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

Wow! It’s been since November that I posted to this blog….gotta do better than that! But then I gotta run more events!!!!!

Quick re-cap: December and January are the “off months”…..then January kicks off with Sno*Drift in Atlanta Michigan and the surrounding towns. I went up there and worked radio net for them one day and start/finish controls one day and had a great time as I always do….but I’d rather be competing.

100 Acre Wood was next and yet again I failed to secure a ride….so I served as “Trouble-shooter” for Tom vonHatten the chairman. That meant I ran around in front of the course opening cars handling political situations or manpower situations as needed. Good thing, too as I had to squire a school bus backward through Pigeon Roost between the running of the 00 car and the 0 car. 100 Acre as most of you may have seen was a weather anomaly. At the end of Saturday’s competition, the competitors were racing and great gravel roads. They left Viburnum and traveled 15 miles southwest to race in 10 inches of new snow! The final stage was mercifully canceled, as most of the workers couldn’t get through. I spent that stage at a spectator point with the new Dent County Sheriff who is now our new biggest fan. Seems he got a ride with Andy Mancin on the shakedown stage and is still grinning.

Olympus came and went…..no ride….it’s the economy!

Dmitri was going to run Oregon so I grabbed a cheap ticket….but then the car wasn’t ready….so I went out and fortuitously landed the role of 0 car co-driver with Lee Sorenson. What a great weekend!!!!! The whole Fugawi course opening team was a blast. These guys do this at a lot of events, but somehow a medical emergency took Lee’s normal co-driver (I always think that term is an oxymoron…how could a co-driver be normal?) out for the weekend…VOILA. I’m available and qualified!

Went out to Portland and spent some time with Lew and Debbie Bailen who are old 100AW committee people that moved to the Portland area three years ago), then went and did my Oregon Trail Rally thing…then Margaret flew out and we became turistas for a week….what a GREAT IDEA! Paddle wheel up the Columbia River Gorge. 100 year old Hotel in the port city of Astoria (town started by John Jacob Astor….hence Astoria!) then two fabulous nights at a B&B overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Newport. Great Micro-brews…wonderful seafood….fantastic wines…..and 7 pounds I need to get rid of. But worth it.

Dmitri assured me we’d be running STPR….but alas…..car not good. Eric Hansen (of Maine and RNY ’08 fame) to the rescue!!!! As you’ve read below a lot of my recent rides have been with Eric….but this time Eric had spent four days at Team O’Neil…..HOT DAMN!!!!

The saga ensues as Joe Anthes and I pull out of St. Louis at 1:00 Wednesday afternoon…and rocket 800 miles across the Eastern US to pull into our 50’s era roach haven motel in beautiful Galeton, PA….about 25 miles West of Wellsboro where the 2009 Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally was actually HQ’d. So logistics were…..interesting!

Crawled into bed about 3:45AM only to have Eric pull my toe at 6:00 to get ready to drive to Wellsboro and leave for recce which started at 7:00….grabbed a bagel and coffee and off we went. Recce was uneventful and Eric is not up to actually creating his own notes, so I read the notes and Eric drove….re-acquainted himself with how notes and the approaching landscape looked. We actually wrapped up early making very few changes to the notes short of hacking out great quantities of SmCr’s, and adding “FL” (my abbreviation for “Flat Over”) to a lot of the remaining ones. STPR is a FAST event!

Our trusty steed for this event is the very veteran ex- Brian Goss (the human Brian Goss….the canine one has departed…RIP) 1995 Dodge Neon. This car had served us well at NEFR last year as well as Rally New York last Fall….Eric also competed at Team O’Neil in New Hampshire in January…so he’s getting used to the car.

At Maine last year Eric’s performance won him some seat time at Team O’Neil which he took advantage of before this year’s STPR….and he then proceeded to give it extra practice in some unspecified gravel pit. We had great expectations!

The first two stages of STPR were repeats of last years Waste Management property stages. 9 miles of trash heap at racing speed! Segments of this stage were open and fast….but very few. The rest were either serpentine 25 mph switchbacks (R2->L1….flat out!!!) or bone crushing bedrock….with some metal fragments occasionally sprouting up through the dirt. Waste Management is a primary sponsor of STPR, and actually these stages do add an element of diversity to the standard STPR racing surface….so money and new roads….who can find anything wrong with that?

To put it succinctly, we beat the snot out of the Neon on this 9 mile stage. At the end of the stage where we waited to turn around and run it backwards, Eric saw brake fluid dripping from the left rear brake area and found we’d fractured a brake line….so he deftly pinched it off…..brakes on all four wheels is highly overrated! The trip out was faster and rougher at the same time, but we got stuck behind another competitor dead in the water in a ravine (through which passing was not possible) and waited for him to roll back down the hill so we could slip by knocking down rally signage as we went (sorry STPR organizers!). And we still did the rougher version (rougher because 45 cars had already been over it once) 12 seconds faster than the previous run….and that included losing 25-30 seconds to the blockage. This was going to be a fun rally and Eric was going to make it that way!

Then we transited back to the Tioga County Fairgrounds where we ran the Subaru Super Special Stage….8/10 of a mile of tractor pull track and mowed field with several thousand spectators watching!!!! With all those spectators, we sorta blew the stage getting stuck once and having to back up once, but it was still fun.

Joe and I met and left the Hansen crew (Mom, Dad, Aunt Uncle, Sister, Cousin and 3-4 of Eric’s guys) to figure out how to get the Neon ready for the next days 10 stages. We met up with Martin Headland at Time Remembered….a regular stop on the STPR weekend for some great Italian Food and Yuengling beer (the oldest brewery in the US!). Great food. Great beer. Great stories.

Then there was the saga of the room key. Remember the motel room (sleeping 5 of us) was 25 miles west of town? Well Joe and I rolled out there, but we didn’t have THE key. One of Eric’s crew guys did and he’d driven off somewhere….so Joe and I settled down to sleep in the front seats of his Dodge truck for an hour and a half ‘til the crew showed up with the appropriate entry mechanism…..off to bed about 12:30…alarm set for 6:00AM

Saturday dawned beautiful, and we gathered around the square in downtown Wellsboro for a 90 minute Parc Exposé. The Neon was as ready as she could be for the nine real stages we would run today and one last trip around the Subaru Super Special at the fairgrounds. I’ve got to say STPR is not known for wimpy stages….9 stages averaging almost 12 miles in length filled the afternoon before the circus at the Fairgrounds. Eric’s Team O’Neil training shined. He spent the whole weekend with braking on only three corners (could never engineer the full repair of the brake line injured on stage #1).

We had two “incidents”. The first was coming across Evan Cline's Subie upside down in the middle of the road with Chris Greenhouse trying to figure out what to do. At first wefelt it was a red cross situation, but we canceled that idea since there were really no injuries. The only option left is something we rallyists call Force Majeur. It’s French, so naturally confusing. What it means is literally “shit happens”. It is then the rallyists duty to get around the blockage an d continue racing…the clock is still running. Well we didn’t have enough manpower to shove Evan’s car out of the way until we had about 7 cars of manpower. When we got it aside we all transited to the finish control feeling the organizers would “adjust” the times on the stage for our common sense. Nope! It was Force Majeur. Brian Deegan (in an AWD Subie) had jumped the bank to the left and successfully passed the blockage, so it was obviously possible….since we chose not to we would most likely be penalized. Back up the road a few miles, Dillon von Way had gone off the road and shown the OK sign and we thought nothing about it. But late arriving cars at the Cline incident were telling us the red cross sign was out at the vanWay car. We dodged a bullet on this one, because the stewards, based on a technicality ruled to throw out the Force Majeur rule (which would have added about 1-13 minutes to our time on that stage) and accepted the Red Cross rule from the van Way incident and neutralized all our times from the wreck back in the pack.

Incident #2 involved the PR Pride of this event, Motorcycle Super Star Brian Deegan. Deegan and his co-driver Chrissie Beavis (who normally runs with Tanner Foust, but Foust had a Drifting conflict this weekend and so was not in attendance), had spun out in a R4> and slammed hard into a bank on the outside of this blind turn. So here we come about 3 minutes later and yours truly is a “tad” late on the call (I admit it…happens occasionally…I’m sure I’m the ONLY co-driver who does it!) and Eric abandons some of his recent training and, seeing the Deegan/Beavis car on the outside of a curve he was going too fast to make, slammed on the brakes. Bad combination of errors! We jump through the ditch, up the bank and nose into Deegans co-driver door.

Fortunately Chrissie is out holding a tow rope hoping to get snatched off the mountain and not sitting in that seat!

So here we all are with the Neon partially impaled in the Subie. I send Eric back up the road to warn oncoming cars and place appropriate reflective triangles. Chrissie and I try to get a passing competitor to stop and pull the Deegan car off the bank. Finally Gary Wiggin (co-driven by Chris Duplessis who appears elsewhere in this blog stream) stops and we get him hooked to the Deegan Subie…and shortly Deegan is facing the right way with the engine fired. I don’t think the wheels were properly aligned, but at least the car would move. I suggested to Ms. Beavis that she get back in the car with the R-A PR Prince and I would wrap up the tow strap so they can get moving quickly. Chrissie, to her total class credit answers that they’re not leaving ‘til the Neon is off the bank. We hook up the Subie to the light bar of the Neon (the tow hook is buried in the dirt too far to hook to) and they pull the gallant steed down the bank almost tipping it on the co-drivers door, but ultimately back on the road. Without that, we would most certainly have joined the growing list of dnfs. I LOVE THIS GAME!!!! Thanks Chrissie….I owe you some serious beer!

Anyway, we’re all home and tucked in. Eric managed the second best 2WD speed factor for the weekend, a win in the first Divisional (but mostly 5^th overall!). The second event with our excursion doesn’t show much of a record, but he maximized seat time and got faster and faster as the weekend progressed.

A quick 12 hours starting at 7:00AM (and hero driver crawled in at 5:45….I heard the roaches crunching, Eric!!!) and those 800 miles just melted away. Home by 6:00-ish. Thanks, Joe for the transportation, camaraderie, and the Single Malt! Thanks Eric for a great safe ride. You've come a long way!

Now to NEFR where I’ll be mentoring another newcomer, none other than our rescuer at STPR, Gary Wiggin!

IRNY '08

2008-11-08T05:30:00.000-08:00

I admit it. I was a Rally New York virgin. I’ve heard numerous stories of “Ivan” rallies, but had to come out and see for myself.

Eric Hansen, you see, is spoiled. We ran his first rallies in Maine last July and we won Prod in both events. So, naturally, he decided to engage me for IRNY. And we had our hands full. First, there would be a lot more competition here than at Maine in the 2WD Production class. And second, the car was feeling a little ‘

abused’ and developed some push back to show us before it would let us have any fun!

I flew into Newark on Wednesday and proceeded up to the Villa Roma resort in Calicoon to meet up with Eric and the AWD team of Scott Wilburn and Constantine Mantopoulos. We would be sharing crew this weekend. Scott’s bride Carrie was to co-drive for Fintan Seeley, but he was a no-show due to a sprained knee on his clutch leg. So Carrie would serve as the brains on the crew...and Super Woman.

First, we supposedly had multiple pass recce (not two pass or one pass or three pass, we just had x time on each stage and we could use it at our discretion). This turned out to be kind of a fantasy, as it was barely enough time to do two passes under ideal conditions, and the instructions for traversing between recce areas was pretty ridiculous. Short times, bad maps, etc. contributed to sharp navigators being VERY valuable. We made all the recce slots and got two pass on almost everything except the first ones (we were a half hour late getting started….make a note….leave a half hour EARLY next time), and we wanted to get some shakedown in before Eric and I had to be back in Calicoon for Bernie Obry’s novice seminar. All in all it was a total scramble 12 hour day from leaving at 7:00AM to parking in the Parc Exposé at 7:00 at night and hanging around for the ceremonial start.

Carrie and I both arrived at the same conclusion mid-day on Thursday that the crew would have to bring the car down to the end of recce so we would even have a chance to run shakedown….it’s SO nice to have a co-driver on the crew!!!!! They were driving the Neon down when it sprung a fuel leak in the feed line from the tank to the injection system. I’m not sure where they went to work on it, but Damien Treanor (Guido) apparently figured out how to fix it and in the confusion we were headed back to Calicoon to work on the car when it was headed down to shakedown. Ahhhhhhhh…coordination!

But that’s OK. We didn’t get any shakedown at Maine either….and that worked out just fine. Eric and I headed off for the Bernie Obry show and were about the only ones to attend even ‘tho there were supposed to be 4 teams there. I’m SO glad we busted our ass to get there. Well, Bernie was worth it, but shakedown probably would have been more valuable!

The car went into Parc Exposé and we sat there for about an hour with 100 of our best friends including Radio Robert!

Radio Robert is one of the best stories of 2008. It seems Robert Cella, AC2RC, read the article that Eric had written up in a local paper about his exploits at Maine in July and got in touch with him and offered to contribute some sponsorship to his entry at IRNY. Then he offered 3 more sponsorship deals to other struggling rallyists. In all he had four entries in the event, and all four finished!!!!! I’d take those odds at any casino…not very likely! But sponsorship breeds a strong desire to finish! THANKS ROBERT!!

Friday morning dawned WAY too early and we headed out to the stages. The first ones served as our ‘shakedown’ as they did at Maine. It’s a good thing to get the cobwebs worked out. We were careful and prudent and didn’t do anything rash. The afternoon stages, however reminded me of racing on washboards! These were extremely rough and potentially very fast. Although it took considerable skill to be both at the same time. Eric was doing a fantastic job when suddenly the poor abused rally car cried ‘uncle’ and just quit. Dead. Nada. No lights. No engine. No nuthin’. I expected some catastrophic but simple electrical failure, like a ground strap or a main B+ line, but in the dark we couldn’t find it and the sweep jeep towed us to the finish.

One of the HAM guys at the finish went looking for the problem in an obvious place (at the positive terminal of the battery) and discovered a loose ignition wire. A nut had vibrated off allowing this little bugger to fall off. So a little judicious wire moving and we were running again, albeit about 25 minutes late.

But 25 minutes is NOT 30 minutes (which is Maximum Permitted Lateness), so we raced down to the next start control and talked our way into a starting time. Since a sweep crew had already entered the stage we were asked to go ‘fast transit’ and not race the stage at speed…which we did.

Back in service we looked the situation over and declared the repairs made out in the field to be adequate and went back out to tackled the same stages again. This time, within 100 yards of the last incident, a clip fell off some tranny linkage which gave Eric a limp noodle for a shift lever. And we were dead in the water again. Jeep. Sweep. Back into service where we engineered a fix for the clip and called it a night. The Bermuda Triangle of Neons had done us in.

Friday night was Halloween. And the bar at the Villa Roma did not disappoint. It seem Super Woman showed up to kick some Co-Driver ass!

But for all the problems we had on Thursday and Friday (fuel leak, electrical, transmission linkage) Saturday would prove to be mostly the opposite. GOD I love those stages! We ran a 4 ½ mile road four times each way and it was the perfect training ground for a new driver. Yeah, we had a flat at a spectator point (that’s a thing with me. Bryan Short and I did that at Colorado, too, but this time we ran the remainder of the stage on the flat….all good lessons for new drivers). And we had to deal with another fuel feed leak (dropping ¼ tank in 20 miles!), but we really attacked these 8 stages.

In an underpowered Production 2WD car, it’s all about carrying speed, since if you lift off the throttle it takes forEVER to get that speed back. So Eric and I worked the whole day on COMMITMENT! Spectators at the ‘bridge’ on the last run of the day will attest to Eric’s commitment at that sweeping L4 flat out with the Neon’s ass hanging out. As a matter of fact we had the fastest 2WD time on BOTH the last two stages.

The hoopin’ and hollerin’ in the car as we blasted across the finish line on that last stage was some of the most jubilant I’ve experienced. I asked a lot from Eric to get him faster and faster this weekend and he met the challenge each and every time. It takes a lot for a driver of a low horsepower, relatively heavy car to take his co-driver’s word for it and not lift over blind crest after blind crest, but he did it and we won stages.

I guess we ended up 2^nd Prod 2WD on the Saturday Rally and the USRC Rally in general (thanks to Super Rally rules). But I have no problems finishing second to the Marciniaks who drove a helluva rally, smooth and fast and stayed out of trouble….and won the USRC Prod 2WD Championship. Congrats!

General impressions of IRNY are positive. Roads are incredible (even the rough ones) and the workers are phenomenal. Ivan has limited roads to work with, but gains permission to use them for long periods of time. Which gives the situation I really enjoy...the ability to take multiple shots at roads and work with the driver (like Justin and I did at RWV two years ago). The recce schedule seemed to lack attention as it was almost impossible to make on schedule and the instructions and maps needed a little more attention. And then there was the scoring. Scoring took until well after midnight and was grievously erroneous when finally published. In this day whan we've been doing this for umpteen years, there's really no reason why we're still experimenting with scoring programs....especially at the USRC championship weekend. A disappointing end to an otherwise fantastic weekend. It'll get worked out. IRNY is on my list to play in next year.

OK…It’s the off-season. Dmitri and I had talked about doing Tall Pines, but I have a scheduling problem and he has no compression in the #3 cylinder, so it looks like I (and Dmitri) have wrapped up the season (unless I somehow end up at Paris over Thanksgiving).

L.S.P.R. (nee: P.O.R.)

2008-10-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

I usually think of LSPR (which is the final round of the Rally-America National series) as the office Christmas party of rally. Everyone find new partners…if only for a night! And some slip off never to be seen!

Ringer’s out, Buffum’s in

Hurst is in, Hurst is out.

DeMotte’s out, Hanson’s in

Swann’s out, DeMotte’s in

Brady/Beavis/MacAlaster’s out, Dolan(?)’s in

Parps is on his umpteenth ride of the year

Wagner is chasing the G5/2WD dream with Dougie.

….and the 510’s out (sniff).

Andy’s out

Tanner’s out

Matthew’s out

Stephan’s out

Kenny’s out

Amy’s out

Christopher’s out

What a strange weekend.

But the weather was AWESOME!

Heath had borrowed Travis’s ECU for the successful run at Ojibwe, and since he’d missed a bunch of events decided we didn’t really have a record going for ’08 and returned the favor by inviting Travis to co-drive at LSPR for him.

After the fantasized Mike Hurst entry died (and that would have been a real adventure), and Piotr lined up the new guy, Dmitri emailed me that Mal Swann was not going to be available. Phew! I finally had an excuse to go!

Rolled into Houghton about 4:00 Thursday and since Dmitri wasn’t going to get in ‘til 8:00 or later, I headed out to the shakedown stage with the St. Louis crew (Joe, Curt, Rob, Ron, and Matt). That’s when I saw Derek hanging out in jeans and Buffum co-driving for Travis. I hear it was a Travis request. He just wanted to have John do the ride along, what with the Championship all sewed up and all. The thought was that he wanted to pick Johns brain some (as John had kicked his ass at the McRae Stages), but there simply wasn’t going to be any time

for that at Travis’s speeds!

Snagged a ride on the shakedown stage with Chris Greenhouse. Chris had driven over to Central Illinois from Ohio a couple of years back to rallycross this car, and it’s been fun watching him progress. It also got me a shot at some notes before I had to jump in with Dmitri. Aside from not penduluming a L2-, I thought Chris’s run was terrific. Thanks for the ride, Chris!

We were to team for crewing purposes with Jim Scray and Colin Vickman in my old Datsun 510 that I sold them in a basket about this time last year. But alas, it was not to be. At a final tuning before leaving Green Bay, the engine guy reported a timing chain guide let loose and piece of ‘stuff’ flew everywhere, rendering the powerplant useless. They brought the beautiful little girl down for Hurst to issue a logbook anyway, and it sat in the parking lot of the Franklin Square wondering why it wasn’t racing with all the other pretty cars. Sad.

So that left the Brothers Scray (Jim and ol’ one-eye, Curt…it was a kitten falling out of a tree…honest) and Colin (and Marissa and the incredible cookies and Modava…just so we had umbrella girls), oh yeah….and Dennis Martin who blew in with the wind Friday before Parc Exposé ended joined us as well. ‘Twas a fun crew!

Dmitri and I have a ton of fun….we’re on the same wavelength. Now to get the Mitsu on that wavelength, too! This is a very well (Murray Thomas) built Evo4. For some reason or other in residence at HavSpeed, it developed a miss that seemed to be attributable to some sensor somewhere (God knows there are enough of them!). But it all seemed worked out and the on again, off again Kishkarev/DeMotte entry was on again.

Friday morning was kinda laid back…..Dmitri ran off with the car to air up tires, we fueled and cleaned and adjusted belts and all that other nervous stuff until it was time to roll over to the Parc Exposé. When Dmitri fired up the Evo, the mis-fire was back with a vengeance. It was virtually impossible to create enough torque to drive the car. Pissing just about everybody on Shelden Street getting over to the Parc Exposé by stopping, starting, lurching, backfiring, etc., we even pulled away from the entrance and discussed not even entering (hey maybe we can get some money back). But the decision was to go ahead and enter and work on the problem.

With maybe 4 minutes to go before we had to pull out (another decision point, because I’d already negotiated with the organizers that if we didn’t clear the first MTC Out we were not officially starting), Scray, Scray and possibly Martin got the car running cleanly by cleaning every contact they could get to and zip-tying everything down tight. The car ran. We started.

Got through the first 1 ½ mile spectator stage in great shape. It occurred to me that the car had much more power than it did at Olympus or Oregon, and Dmitri was pretty aggressive. Maybe this was all going to be OK after all!

The first two honest stages were GODAWFUL fast! There was nothing in the notes for the first 3 ½ miles but 5’s and 6’s. Dmitri was a little less aggressive on these than the spectator stage (perhaps it was those trees whizzing by!), but still ran great respectable times. And then we transited the VERY LONG transit down to our first real service at Kenton (nice to have a town named after you, huh!).

It was in here we lost Piotr who deftly removed a corner’s worth of suspension and parked it for the night. The intrepid Piotr, however would muster up the resources to be back on the road Saturday night.

Service in Kenton went great. Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and the World’s Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookies greeted us and we went about all the standard business.

We left and ran Passmore (the stage that HATES Dennis). The Evo did sputter a little as we departed, but cleaned up and apparently ran fine for the next 2 stages. It was getting slippy for some reason. Far point seemed even more of a challenge. It was in here that ACP swapped sponsors from NOS Energy Drink to SON….at least that’s what it read on the back end of his car when I lat saw it off to the side on it’s roof. It seems he’d dropped a cylinder back on the 2^nd or 3^rd stage and was rallying on using only the 3 left. That meant carrying a LOT of speed into corners and not having any torque left to rescue a wrong slot. He didn’t rescue one of them and rolled the car onto it’s back in a truly submissive posture. Just Dents can fix the body it right up. The engine will still take some work, however.

It seemed like Dmitri was struggling a little to keep the car going fast and in a straight line on these two stages. The times showed it. But it was back in to Kenton for another short service and then back out to these last 2 stage for another run. This time the car sputtered a lot leaving the MTC….and never cleaned up. Dmitri drove on up the highway past the entrance to Passmore trying to get it to run right. No luck. We turned it around and on the way back it began to run on only 3 cylinders. When we pulled back into the service area and the guys pulled the plugs, the #3 cylinder was full of oil. Zero compression. We were done.

Another serious decision had to be made. It was a long way back to Houghton and the bars MIGHT be closing by the time we got back. There’s a bar right there on Main Street. So we and ACP’s crew co-mingled with the Sarah Palin hunting crowd at the pub in Kenton and then leisurely drove back to Houghton. The good news is that we decided we did NOT need to get up in time for the Parc Exposé in Calumet at 9:30!

Saturday was spectating day for us. Not my favorite thing to do, but the weather was beautiful, and we could get to 3 spots over the day and the service area in Copper Harbor. So off we went. The turn onto pavement on Burma was pretty cool. The best part of that was Dave Cizmas being towed at 50 mph around that corner and waving as his car was being whipped around! There’s already a youtube video of that!

Copper Harbor Service didn’t yield much new data, but then we discovered a way to get up on Brockway for the 2^nd run and hiked on up. The R2> ½ mile in on the hillclimb is a complete BLAST to spectate. Then we schlepped back down and scooted over to the finish of Gratiot Lake. I’d worked this spectator marshal position in the past and was quite familiar with its topography. Fun place to watch.

That’s it for LSPR. I will be co-driving for Eric Hansen (of Maine fame in an earlier post) the weekend of October 31^st, Nov. 1^st), and have been asked to co-drive again for Dmitri at Tall Pines, but the car status is in question there.

Oh, Heath pretty much kicked ass with Travis. Travis has the distinction of being the only Rally-America license holder to finish in the top ten overall as both a driver AND a co-driver this year! After 120+ racing miles they were a little over a minute down on Pat Moro, but finished a strong 2^nd in PGT and 7^th O/A! CONGRATS!

Until my report from International Rally New York….keep the wheels down!

Four for four with first-timers

2008-09-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

For the second time this year, I teamed up with a first time rallyist. Eric Hansen and I enjoyed a great time at Maine earlier this season and now I had a great weekend with Bryan Short from Ft. Collins at Rally Colorado. For the uninitiated reader (and I doubt there are many of them here…not sure if there are even readers, uninitiated or not), beginning rallyists are not allowed to use Jemba Inertial course notes on their first events. It’s a safety thing with Rally America. But there’s a loophole that says if the co-driver has enough experience, then course notes are allowed no matter how inexperienced the driver. So I was allowed to use them with Eric at Maine and now with Bryan at Colorado. R-A is really interested in how this goes, because there’s this ongoing debate on whether the use of notes is safer or not. My vote says it depends on the co-driver, so the idea that an experienced co-driver is the determining factor works for me. I think they need to do a better job of defining “experienced.” For the time being I would develop a named pool of co-drivers that would be allowed to do this. Coefficients is not the equivalent of “experience” when it comes to interpreting and delivering notes and managing a driver. OK. Off the soap box.

Bryan bought Cowboy Kenny’s PGT car from Jeff Moyle last November after LSPR (because Jeff acquired the Colin McRae X-Games car to run open with this season with Scott Putnam). On a sad side note, we’ve just learned that Jeff was killed this past weekend in a parasailing accident in Houghton, so the fraternity loses a plebe. Jeff was a fun guy with a smile on his face and just enough ‘attitude’ to be a great member of this group. He’ll be missed. OK…back on topic. Geeez I’m A.D.D. this morning!

Bryan has been using the ’02 WRX for hillclimbs in the Colorado Cup series around the state this year and since Rally Colorado was part of the series, he decided to enter. Where to find a co-driver. Special Stage. Since Heath was busy turning in a Senior project at MTU and unavailable for Colorado, it was looking like I was going to go out there and be a finish control captain….sigh. But I contacted Bryan who had no idea who I was (expecting a woman to answer the phone!...yeah….really!), and told him I was available and a deal was struck.

I caught the shuttle from DIA to Ft. Collins and Bryan picked me up and took me to the house where the Subie was mounted on the trailer and ready to go. Over to the shop and pick up parts, tires, parts, gas cans, parts, and more parts. Where was the crew? What crew? He hadn’t really needed a crew at hillclimbs, so really didn’t think it was going to be a big deal here. Hmmmmmm. Tires were about 6 pretty worn out Michelins, although they might have worked, they wouldn’t have been much fun and a worn out set of Silverstones (slightly better edges, but not enough of them). So, no crew, and 10 worn out tires and we’re ready to go!

This is where I LOVE this game and the people in it. I’d emailed Scott Crouch at Flatirons Tuning to ask if his people would “watch over” us in service. He was now aware we had no crew. Flatirons had gone through the car when Bryan got it, so they knew the car already. Now the tire situation began to look large on the horizon. I finally got a chance to talk to Buffum and Smith to see if we could work a deal for their shakedown takeoffs and they said sure! When I looked at them, ours were better! Ooops!

A short conversation with Scott again and voila! We had a set of Michelins they’d used at Oregon and shakedown that were clearly 60% better than the ones we had. I told you I love this crowd!

There’s a reason very experienced co-drivers should go with beginners. It takes every bit of concentration to put together a successful weekend for a first-timer. When I co-drive for Dennis or Heath or someone who’s been at this for awhile, the boundaries between responsibilities is fairly clear. There are three areas of responsibility usually clearly defined, between the driver, the co-driver and the crew chief. There are some things that require input from two and even sometimes all of these, but mostly the three can work independently. In the case of the first timer, none of these boundaries are clear and it falls on the shoulders on the experienced crew member to see that to the best of his or her abilities all the bases are covered….ALL the bases! So besides the normal co-driver duties of fuel allotment, logistics, note editing, computer knowledge, and general operating of the event, one can now assume that they will be involved in tire selection, educating both the rookie driver on the “operations” of a rally (where to go when) and the crew chief on setting priorities, that’s assuming one HAS a crew chief, or even a crew! This is why I claim that coefficients is not an adequate measure of experience to allow this situation.

Enough of the background. Bryan and I agreed we had three goals for the weekend.

A. Have fun

B. Finish

C. Improve throughout the event.

We nailed ‘em! We had a blast. Bryan got about three or four rallies of experience in one. He had crises and lived through them (changed a flat on Stokes Gulch in front of 500 spectators and drove 6 miles on a skid plate hanging on by one bolt and making horrendous noises). And took the Regional PGT wins for both Colorado Cog-1 and 2. Not bad for a first outing!

His car is a real handful for a rookie. It’s got full diffs which means that all wheels are driving all the time (not the situation in the stock WRX). So to get the car to go around sharp corners, it’s an absolute requirement that it be tossed in as the front wheels have a tendency to understeer you. Bryan has a lot of motocross experience, so tends to “drive” through corners, and dealt with the understeer on the exits of turns all weekend. Toward the end he was really getting into the swing of diving deeper into corners and tossing the car a little more, but the old finish line in view took some of that “fire” out so he could accomplish goal B. Our flat on Stokes Gulch was caused by an overzealous understeer problem that took us off the road substantially. He did a masterful job of downshifting and pointing the car (thus preventing the roll) and getting us back on the road. Too bad the cost was the right rear tire, because he deserved to get away with that one.

And we ruled out stopping with the noisy skid pan because it didn’t seem like it would cause much problem even if it let loose (which it didn’t). But boy, was it noisy! At the end of the stage, Bryan pulled past the control zone sign like a pro, jumped out and removed the lone bolt holding the skid pan with NEEDLE NOSED PLIERS (the only tool he had in the car…..another lesson). We left it with Mitch Williams at the control and took off only losing a minute getting into the final stage. We drove it gingerly as we were now without any protection underneath. But a finish is a finish and that was goal B. Goal A was a slam dunk! We pretty much giggled and scratched the whole weekend with the exception of my first “road points” in my seven years of co-driving since coming out of retirement back in 2000. But I’ll leave that to the next post. It’s a story unto itself.

Thanks, Bryan! Had a blast!

Ojibwe '08

2008-08-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

Ojibwe is good to us.

Two years ago Matthew Johnson and I took advantage of some late event mishaps from Tanner Foust to not only win Ojibwe in PGT, but stand on the podium as third overall with Travis Pastrana and Matt Iorio.

Last year Heath and his Mom won PGT here.

We were looking forward to some good luck for a change as 100AW hadn’t been kind to us and STPR sucked the life out of the engine after 3 stages. A new engine and a borrowed ECU from Travis Hanson gave us hope.

This year Heath drove a steady focused event overcoming no end of minor dramas to take his second PGT win here in as many years and land a respectable 6^th overall.

The list of mini-crises looks like a Murphy’s Law who’s who.

There was:

a strut tower top hat that broke studs
power steering fluid that leaked and smelled up stuff
a watch that disappeared into the car somewhere for three stages
parts that just fell off the car
interior mirror
fuel filler door
right front fender liner
1/2 of a rear bumper cover (later recovered and re-mounted)
jacks that didn't want to hold up the car
an intermittent Coralba
the “outhouse” intrusion
a flat discovered 3 minutes before entering ATC
an impact wrench that decided it wanted to run stage 15 until it ran out of juice
a big beautiful easy-up that blew away at the final service.
...and this is only the stuff I heard about!

…and STILL the team held it together to win. Like the kid who came home with a black eye told his mom…..”you shoulda seen the other guy!” This was a rally of attrition.

Skipping the stuff mentioned above (which is really just in a day’s work on a rally team), our international rally Olympics (US vs. Poland) was a blast from the git go. Poland fielded a squad of 3 PGT cars any one of which stood a chance of winning Gold. Wild man Jaroslaw Sozanski, who is flamingly (albeit sometimes recklessly) fast was here to keep chalking up points. This has been a good year for Jaroslaw. He’s only dnf’d one event. Adam Markut in the older venerable DSM proved to be the real challenge for the weekend. He’s always fast, but we could usually count on him entering the Regionals and not bothering with the National points race….not so this weekend. He was in the big hunt. And Robert Borowicz is always fast and has beautiful, well-prepared equipment. This was going to be a challenge for the US.

A couple of early stage jitters Saturday afternoon and a set of uncut Hankooks put us at a small disadvantage for the first 4 stages. We sorta skated on top of the gravel and Heath was having to saw at the wheel to keep things going in a straight line. We remedied that at the first service by putting on some cut Hankook 202’s and promptly went out and set some 6^th and 7^th fastest times overall. We were definitely settling down.

Sunday morning dawned chilly and cloudy, but soon brightened up as things dried out and the dust started to hang.

In the motel parking lot Chris Lowe and John King, our venerable crew for this adventure was “going over” the car finding a little crack here and a little loose there. We had to locate another front strut top hat (thanks Rock Star!) and that issue was averted….then fuel and go over to the parc exposé at Northwest Tech. We had moved from 23^rd on the road Saturday to 17^th on Sunday, so that felt good. And our PGT competition was right in front of us. There was about a minute separating all three of us (Amy BeberVanzo had rolled Saturday, and Robert for some reason was not going fast and had fallen quite far behind). So Adam, Jaroslaw, Henry Krolikowski (running open and declared on the AMERICAN team) and us headed out to the woods.

On the first stage, Adam took us by 3 seconds and we took Sozanski by 2. This was gonna be a dog fight!!

About 2/3 of the way through the next stage, we rounded a corner to triangles out, a perfectly good live tree down across the road and a steaming WRX PGT car of Sozanski’s parked about 30 feet into the woods. This was going to take more than a Dent Wizard to fix! Scratch Sozanski. But Adam spanked us on this one by almost 30 seconds.

About ¾ of the way through the next stage there was Adam having slid off the road and it appeared centered with no traction. He apparently got out (an official “yank and spank” was allowed here), but had accumulated a ton of time getting out, so that left Borowicz and us to thrash it out. Robert was running his own race, as were we, apparently waiting for us to join the group of woodsmen who were communing with trees. But we were not going to give him that pleasure.

Despite having a PGT win solidly in hand, Heath didn’t change his modus operandi and kept driving exactly the way he’d been driving…even thrashing it on the short 3.7 mile stage with a dozen dry bottom water ditches. Markut, having been pulled out of his aforementioned situation, proceeded to drive like a madman and set some blistering stage times on the last three scored stages. I say scored stages, because shortly after we passed the Ken Block off on the last 22 mile monster stage, a damaged tree fell across the road blocking the stage and forcing organizers to cancel it and give everyone from us back the same time.

So that’s it. The race is not always to the swiftest, but it pays to be fast anyway. The old adage was never truer that to win you have to finish. Heath does amazingly well for a young man who only gets to run 3-4 times this year. Being off two months does not set you off on early stages with a lot of confidence. Then you look up when you start to get it together and you’re already 45 second down. But he was consistent and continued to get smoother and more confident as the rally progressed. You heard it here first. He’s the next MJ.

Oh. The outhouse incident? The short of it is we gave the spectators a really great show when I late called a L3 after a R5/CR at a spectator point. I understand we moved an abandoned DNR outhouse somewhat when we overshot the corner and that no one was in residence at that time. I’m told there is at least one set of sequential photos of it and I’m waiting to buy the negatives (wait…there aren’t any negatives any more….are there?). Look for somebody's video to show up on YouTube!

Bronze to Adam Markut (who exhibited incredible persistence). Silver to Robert Borowicz (who just drove an amazingly clean event). And Gold to Heath Nunnemacher (who deserved the win tiptoeing the line between too fast and too cautious). Raise the flag. Play the Star Spangled Banner!

You never forget your first.....(long)

2008-07-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

I know I never will. Moonlight Monte, 1970. 1964 Corvair Fitch Sprint. DNF with a dozen stories I still tell.

About three weeks ago Andrew Havas from Havspeed texted me inquiring of my availability for the New England Forest Rally. I’ve always (not so) secretly wanted to tackle some nice smooth Cherokee – like roads (where I first heard, then saw the RX-7 at Cherokee in 2001) with Andrew. I checked with Heath (Nunnemacher) to make totally certain that our engine woes at STPR were going to preclude entry at NEFR and texted back to Andrew, “let’s talk."

He called and informed me that unfortunately he had little funds and less time for driving these days, but was finishing up some cage work on the ex-Brian Goss (the human version) now Eric Hansen (no, not the one from Team O’Neil) ’95 Neon and would I be willing to break in a newbie.

I had to think about that one a bit. All of my rides have had Rally or Racing experience, understood the game and most of its nuances, and had exhibited strong tendencies for self (and consequently MY) preservation! But a good chat with Eric convinced me that his short years on this planet was an unfair estimate of his reasonable maturity and a deal was struck.

Then it hit me. No notes! In Rally America events, drivers are not allowed to have high powered 4WD cars or race on organizer supplied Jemba notes. They’re supposed to putter through the courses without enough power to hurt themselves and not enough information to abandon driving what they see. It had been 2002 since I had co-driven a stage off the route book. What had I gotten myself into?

But like a good co-driver I checked the rules (and not in an area I’d normally be concerned with) and it would be LEGAL for us to use course notes since the co-driver (moi!) has at least 20 coefficients (oh, yeah…..at LEAST!!!).

Andrew advised Eric that this would be an incredible boost to his learning curve (since without these notes we would run with just the tulip instructions about every ½ mile or so). With one exception of an instructor at Team O’Neil (Wyatt I think) who already had great car handling ability, no R-A driver had begun his career using notes. This was going to be a great experiment.

I met up with Eric the first time Thursday morning (he’d arrived at the condo at Sunday River at some ridiculous hour of the night before that only twenty-somethings recognize) and we headed off for a cup of coffee and the recce route in Berlin, New Hampshire.

The plan was that Eric would drive my Dodge Journey rental and I would read the Jemba notes so he could put together the visual observation with the audible one and start to make a connection. As with any driver, I was editing on the fly mostly just explaining the direction and nature of each approaching driving action. He was a serious student and was going to get his money’s worth out of his investment. Within a couple of hours, he was beginning to make the connection. By the end of the day, we were both convinced he at least INTELLECTUALLY understood the link. What would happen the next day….at speed….on real stages….would be a different matter!

Eric is a rallycrosser, so the first Mickey Mouse stage behind our condo at Brookside was little more than a shot at one of his RallyX runs. In a disappointed tone he informed me he hadn’t heard a thing I said in the first 48 seconds of his rally career. But one thing was certain. This was gonna be fun! He wasn’t shy about throwing the Neon around.

We then transited over to Mexico rather silently. Eric’s an interesting dichotomy. As gregarious and schmoozy as he can be in a crowd, he’s totally opposite in the rally car. Focused and quiet. That’s a good sign. It was a silent ride to the Mexico Rec area while we both pondered what was ahead.

We did talk about how to handle the infamous jump at this well known and well attended Super Special. It’s notorious for suckering competitors into breaking their cars (and it did not disappoint this weekend….ask little Burke), and we decided potentially ending his seat time with under a mile of stage was not a good idea. With apologies to the crowd we pooched the jump on purpose. Reports from other spectators, however, are that the sweeping right up onto pavement at the finish looked terrific. And our time pretty well confirmed it. To my surprise this time he told me he not only heard everything I’d said, but he “felt” it all fit together.

We ran the three more real stages into the evening ending up on super fun Concord Pond. Again I wouldn’t let him fly the jumps (well, OK…we did get some air over the “Big Crest” drop off about a mile from the finish), and put the first Regional Rally in the books.

Back to the barn with his first rally under his belt and his first win. It’s not our fault there was only one Prod car entrant in the Regionals. A win’s a win and he drove well enough to deserve it.

I’m not sure Eric understood the Friday stages were just a warm-up, but he had a pretty stern look on his face when it finally sunk in that Saturday’s stages would be three times the mileage of Friday’s.

Feeling pretty cocky with his first place trophy rattling around in his head, he set out Saturday as if to challenge our Havspeed stable mates, the PGT entry of Scott Wilburn and Aaron Crescenti. Now these guys WON one of the Regionals at STPR outright!

Question. How many offs can you have in one 15 mile stage and still be running? At least 3! We’re calling this one Eric’s Red Mist Stage. The first one occurred in a sweeping left hander which had the whole car off (on my side, of course….he’s got that part right) and very lucky to be able to jostle the car back and forth and finally drive out. Well, thought I, that should be a lesson that would get his head in the game.

But critiquing on the fly just doesn’t work. The co-driver loses his place in the notes. The driver loses concentration. And someone’s feelings usually get hurt. So we were going to discuss what happened over the hour or so we had at the turn-around.

Not 4 miles later, I was calling him into an 80 L4/Cr>. About half way to the crest I got the unmistakable feeling that he was thinking this was about a 5+ and setting the car up under full throttle with my bellowing “this is a L4, 4, 4!"

In hindsight, that was pretty dumb of me. What right did I have thinking he would translate my urgent “4’s” as useful? My words should have been “Slow the hell down!!!!!” But I’m a co-driver and I was teaching a driver. You don’t immerse yourself in Hispanic culture to learn Spanish and then speak English, do you?

This time we landed hard. I thought at first we were going over, but he managed to keep it on the wheels and we were hung up on rocks and not moving. I grabbed the detestable symbol of defeat (the triangle) and headed back up the road to the crest. I was about to place the warning when a big ruckus down at the car informed me that the media types on the hill had swept down and helped the car off the rocks. I ran back down off the crest and jumped in the car suggesting we move to the inside of this little L4/Cr> so we wouldn’t get collected by Rick Spaulding who was behind us. We settled down a bit and took our time getting buckled in. Rick passed us and the car of Conor Malone and Glenna Chestnutt pulled up along side us. The rule says if you don’t see an “OK” sign or a “Red Cross” or a triangle, you ASSUME it to be a Red Cross situation which requires you to stop. They did exactly the right thing. I just had my head down trying to get the damned buckles to snap. It took us a while to convince Malone/Chestnutt we were OK and off we both went. It would behoove R-A to work out some procedure for what to do after a triangled incident while a team is buckling up getting ready to re-enter the course. I vote for flashers indicating everything’s OK, but who am I.

All buckled up and back on the road, I’m just CERTAIN he’s learned his lesson by now. How silly of me! Just to add insult to injury (and balance the damage on both sides of the car) we took a quick ditch visit on the outside of a R3 (said ditch being full of melon sized boulders) ripping the left rear tire off the rim with about 4 miles to go. It’s a rear, so we drove it to the finish, but it wasn’t pretty. I’d had this type of experience up here with Matthew Johnson two years ago and it cost us the win in PGT.

In 15 miles we’d probably done $1500 worth of damage. I hate to think what percentage of the purchase price that represents!

Question 2. Did you ever have one of those incidents like maybe playing baseball at lunch and sliding into home in school and you tore your pants? Then you had to parade into your next class with your pink plaid boxer shorts hanging out? That’s how we felt after the finish control driving past all the earlier cars who were turned around waiting to run the stage in reverse. Destroyed tire carcass. Rim all bent up and busted. Fender lining hanging out and dragging and noisy. You don’t sneak around with car in this condition! Eric was a tad dejected to say the least.

Then Travis Pastrana saw us and gave us a big grin and a thumbs up…then Chris….and Matthew and others. You’re in the fraternity now, Eric!

Tire changed (and another spare borrowed from Alan Moody in another ’95 Neon) and we set out on that same treacherous stage backwards.

To say that Eric had been humbled would be an understatement. My right foot kept mashing down that imaginary gas peal all us co-drivers have on our side of the car! He came back out on that road about 6/10 the pace he went in on. He’d learned a lesson. That’s what he was here for. It was going to be a long day.

Back in Berlin, our service crew had a lot of “stuff” to deal with in 30 minutes from our multiple excursions, and ended up doing triage figuring some things weren’t going to get done in time. We had bent spindles and arms, a huge poke in the gas tank which put the pickup so high in the tank that we only had the effective use of about 5 gallons (even thought the tank was full). We had a small gas tank leak (not terminal) and a dragging skip plate.

To make along story loud, we drove the 54 mile transit, the 17 ½ mile stage and the other 9 mile transit to the next service dragging the skip plate. Mostly it sounded like a snow plow on dry pavement. We did finally realize that it was aerodynamic, because over 60 mph it actually picked up off the pavement and gave us a break! This was REALLY going to be a long day!

In the middle of the 54 mile transit we were watching the fuel gauge start to drop precipitously. We’d been following ACP’s monster service crew trucks at speeds so slow it was jeopardizing our ability to get to the start control on time….and we were running out of effective usable fuel. We made the decision to stop at a gas station (allowed at this event as “emergency fuel”) and top off the tank. We put almost two gallons in. Yeah…I know….late to a control for two gallons. But better a couple of minutes late than dead in the water with a faulty pickup that won’t yield more than 5 gallons.

Fuel maximized we set out to try to make the start control with minimal time penalties. This is an obsession with me. It actually got Heath and I kicked out of the 100AW for trying to get to an MTC on time and speeding to do so. I HATE road points. I REFUSE to allow road points to enter my score card. Rallies are lost by co-drivers who get their teams road points. And this trip took some creative driving, although we were never more than 5 mph over the allowed speed (that’s the margin before an official will start awarding penalties). And we got some strange looks as this white Neon snow plow snarled past slower vehicles, but we made the ATC with about 1-1/2 minutes in hand. The South Mountain stage was long and noisy, but otherwise uneventful…..oh…except my intercom microphone finally failed and I had to yell over the car noise and the skid plate noise to give Eric the notes. It came back a bit for us on the next stage, but failed by the end. For the last stage we swapped helmets. Drivers don’t have anything useful to say at speed. They’re supposed to be concentrating! I offered to swap seats, and Eric actually offered, but that’s not what I was here for.

So the kid won the first two rallies he entered. He’s now a rock star! He’s already developed a nice flair with the Sharpies on adoring fan’s posters. He’s on a first name basis with Travis and Ken and Matthew and Andy. He does the post rally bar scene like a pro!

Do I think notes with a novice works? I’ll answer with a qualified ‘yes.’ Qualified because the current rule calls for 20 coefficients in the right seat. That’s not enough for the job I did this past weekend. Minimally that would be the Regionals associated with 4 National rallies…possibly less than a half a season.

Doing this with a beginner is 50% more difficult than jumping in with an experienced driver. With the experienced driver each can count on some basic understanding of each other’s roles…or at least have the language to sort them out. With the total novice (even a talented one like Eric and they all won’t be that competent off the shelf), the experienced co-driver takes the responsibility for the whole enchilada….like not using Jemba language to save the 2^nd off…..my bad.

Actually the thought of a part-time co-driver with 20 coefficients doing what I did last weekend scares the hell out of me. I’ve got a lot of years in this game (and many other forms of rally) and I didn’t get it all correct this weekend by a long shot. I’m sure there are others who would make better teachers. But they’re a Marc Goldfarb, or a Jimmy Brandt (oh, I'll pay for that one), or a Martin Headland, or a Doug Woods, or a Cindy Krolikowski, or a Keith Morison, or a Rob Bohm,..….not a sophomore with 20 coefficients.

Eric will recognize the full impact of his Red Mist Stage as he invests in band-aids and transplants to bring his Neon back up to fighting trim. But that won’t deter him. He’s hooked. You never forget your first.

A new temporary gig

2008-06-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

Well, Heath's motor is not feeling well, so we're opting out of NEFR. Somehow he thinks we "scuffed" pistons at STPR. Not sure how that happens, but it certainly acted like it. Over heated, slumped quickly in power and finally expired.

Anyway, that aside for the time being and hoping it's all OK by Ojibwe, I got a call from Andrew Havas to see if I'd consider breaking a newbie, Eric Hansen. Eric, it seems has purchased Brian Goss's venerable Neon (I'm told 23 events and 21 finishes. No mechanical dnf's. Pretty impressive record!!). The Havas shop is upgrading the cage in this car (along with jumping in and helping rebuild one unfortunate MR2 from STPR AND crewing the Wilburn PGT effort) and tweaking some other stuff. A deal was struck and I'll be at NEFR in a P Neon and getting yet another youngster addicted to this sport.

Eric has rallycrossed and knows the physical dynamics of throwing a car around, and we'll be able to use notes since I have enough experience as a co-driver to qualify for that. So we will get the notes and run recce and start to understand how to communicate. This will be a great exercise for both of us. Eric, because he's never done this before and won't know what to expect. And me, because I'll be looking for confidence and maturity in a person who's been let loose on a road with no rules! Havas has me expecting to be pleased!!!!

I thoroughly enjoy the role of bringing new drivers up to speed. This is a game where often, then role of the co-driver with a new driver is underestimated. In many cultures, fathers take their sons to professional prostitutes so they can experience a quality "first experience". While many teams progress well from roommates to building a car to rallying together, most discover the rallying experience lacking. Not so when the newbie finds a veteran to "break him (or her) in." There will never be another "first time" and I intend for this on to be a memorable experience for Eric and one that snags his ass in this sport for a lifetime!

What's Big Brown and Nunnemonster RallySport got in common?

2008-06-13T08:19:00.001-07:00

When Big Brown got out of the gate at the Belmont Stakes last weekend, the crowd was hoping for the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.

When the Nunnemonster team set off on the stages at STPR last weekend to avenge their “issues” at 100AW, the team was hoping for some real good seat time, flashes of brilliance (from both sides of the car) and even a possible PGT podium since Stephan Verdier was not in attendance.

Thursday recce went well and Heath and I got a lot of good data into the notes for us to use. We were introduced to the new stage at STPR, Waste Management I (and it’s turn around evil twin, Waste Management II). For 9+ miles this stage has everything. Some of the tightest twistiest roughest stuff since Echo Lake on LSPR (picture first gear RallyCross stuff) high speed smooth stuff (rev limiter in 5^th), high speed rutted stuff (throwing your car every which way), jumps (which we chose not to jump and for good reason….cars dnf’d on these jumps!).

Thursday night we took the 686 car out to the shakedown stage and discovered we had a nicely running normally aspirated rally car. For some reason the turbo decided to take a holiday. Back in town we consulted a few local Subie geniuses and got the whole thing worked out. We would start with plenty of boost.

On Friday morning, while we were set up in the service area at the Fairgrounds, Heidi Niday (JB’s wife and a steward at this event) approached me to see if I knew of any co-drivers available. Seems Don Conley’s Co-driver flunked a breathalyzer test at the Novice School and they threw him out. Well now….It also seems that Heath’s Mom has about 8 or 9 “notes” events under her belt, so the hookup was made. Oh….a true co-driver, Heidi (Nunnemacher, not Niday) showed up with helmet and suit so she was ready to go!!! I LOVE IT when things fall into place!

Our pass on Waste Management I was less than stellar, but we were one of a very few cars not changing a tire in the turnaround. We discussed why the relatively slow time and decided we had not attacked the slow stuff hard enough. In 15 mph competitive sections, 18 mph is a 20% increase…or 12 seconds per mile….so we had to take the slow stuff more seriously. It’s a math/co-driver thing, but it’s real. Getting an extra mile per hour at 15 MPH is much more critical than getting it at 115 MPH. On Waste Management II (WM I in reverse) we turned a very respectable time and boosted our finishing position 10 slots. Felt good.

Then on to the Fairgrounds and the Subaru Spectator Stage. This was actually kinda fun. A walk through revealed the surface (which was on land fill) was strewn with all kinds of metal chards, but they never seemed to cause a problem. The rally ended up running this twice and I only remember seeing one flat. We actually turned the fastest PGT time on this stage. Unfortunately the Conley/Nunnemacher car discovered some weak linkage issues with their G2 VW and dnf’d the stage, but the rules allowed for that and they were only penalized 1:00 and allowed to restart the next morning.

So home to bed and up for the Parc Exposé on the square in Wellsboro the next AM.

There was a little excitement as Crew Chief Chris Lowe was forced into the Parc Exposé by an official before we had an opportunity to refuel. So a quick chat with steward Steve Gingras got us the opportunity to fuel on the way out of town at Crew member John King’s abandoned gas station…worked out well. But having killed 5-6 minutes refueling, we had to scoot to get to the next stage, the iconic Asaph stage with the great R2+ over bridge with 1000’s of spectators. We made it there with time to spare, but as we checked in it was obvious there was a “hold-up”. Seems Pastrana had turned his new ’08 STi into a VW Beetle about 4 miles in and a red cross had been (justifiably, since his co-driver, Derek Ringer had been hurt and needed medical attention) thrown. So we transit Asaph. RATS!

Now here’s where Big Brown comes in. We started the next stage all full of piss and vinegar. Heath was driving quite aggressively and I was on the notes….and about 3 miles in the car just started to “back down”, Big Brown style. By 4.8 miles we pulled it off to the side with very little power, LOTS of temperature, and she finally died. Fortunately Big Brown didn’t die, but the 686 car certainly did.

The Conley/Nunnemacher G2 car, however did finish and took second in G2.....great run!!! They ran the final Subaru Spectator Stage in true "Never-Say-Die" fashion unable to get the car into any gear but 4th!!!!!!

So that’s the story. I know. That’s racing. But I want the world to see what a talented young driver Heath is. We kicked some PGT ass at 100AW and were set to repeat here.

The prognosis on the engine is, at this printing, unknown. So NEFR is a maybe. Ojibwe will be the next certain event for Nunnemonster RallySport.

Many thanks go to a marvelous crew....Chris, Karen, John, Eric, Nick, and Heidi even 'tho she ended up co-driving for someone else. I'm sure that was a helluva lot more fun than bumming around service and cooking burgers!!!!

Lots of car parts!

2008-05-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

Oergon Trail '08 should go down as the rally of the decade.....for attrition! Cars littered the hillsides of rural Oregon all day Saturday and Sunday. After running a handful of Mickey Mouse stages at Portland International Raceway Friday night and yet another in Hillsboro Saturday morning, we went out west to run some proper stages.

In the first 10 miler we saw 5 sets of triangles and drivers and co-drivers with OK signs. But no cars. The cars were all so far down the mountains they weren't visible at road level! Then into service at the Vernonia School and back out to a nice 16 miler....3 more off. In two stages we'd lost over 1/3 of the cars in front of us!

Dmitri drove a fast but cautious rally. Our times (when everybody was running) were in the 13th -15th spot among all the cars running (both National and Regional). We had a real battle going with Dave and Rick Hintz (local NW Rally heroes) for the overall win of the first Regional.
But by the time the day had ended, They'd broken a header and we'd lost a turbo pipe so we both dnf'd! SubieGal Jamie Thomas (I co-drove for her at the rain shortened Wild West in '06) inherited the Regional win in her PGT WRX Wagon. Great drive!

A similar story benefited Pat Moro over the weekend. Piotr Wiktorczyk had rented a PGT Subie from Cascade Autosport (the same guys who'd worked on Dmitri's car between Olympus and here) to challenge Stephan Verdier and Scott Crouch in PGT. Before the sun set Sunday, both Piotr and Stephan had gone off and dnf'd and Moro inherited the PGT win.

But close on his heels all weekend were the husband and wife team of Nate and Brandye Conley. While not setting blistering paces all weekend, their stage times were frequently in the top 10 which left them a position to inherit whatever anyone wanted to give them. Wiktorczyk and Verdier went off late. Add to that Norm LeBlanc flying off on the penultimate stage and Travis Hanson had gone off on Saturday. Jamie Thomas was only running the regionals, so PGT left the Conley's some real opportunities for points. And they took them. AND fifth overall! CONGRATS!

So next on the Hemispheric calendar is Rocky....in Alberta, CA. There are a LOT of cars withdrawing from that event this week!

Oh...and how cool is it that two of the podium cars are Mitsubishi's!!!!!

Off to STPR, but first a little diversion to the UK to see my daughter, Mindy, her husband Chris, and our rally buddies in the West Midlands!

Once more into the brink!!!

2008-05-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

So Dmitri left the car with Cascade Autosport near Seattle after Olympus for some well deserved R&R. There I understand she received some gusseting in the rear suspension and a left front wheel that was actually properly located (thus allowing Dmitri to drive in a straight line!). Also she received new knees (rebuilt suspension struts) and had her internals examined (drive train found to be in excellent condition.....a phenomenon the Subaru guys wish they had...Mitsu drive trains are BULLET-PROOF).

So we'll meet at the Holiday Inn Express in Hillsboro, OR Thursday and start to figure out how to keep up with the Hintz Brothers (local regional experts at this) to try to get Dmitri some additional regional points. Chasing National Points with the likes of Block, Pa$trana, Pinker, Foust, Johnson, etc., etc., etc., is not worth the head games it plays on you.

Oregon is one of those irritating events that just eats up days. We have to be at Portland International Raceway (45 minutes from our motels) to run about 7 2/3 miles of stages between 7 and 9PM Friday night. Then we race all day Saturday. Then we race all day Sunday....so we get a lot of miles, but we also use a lot of motel nights. And those of us who live East of Oregon (and who doesn't) most likely will not fly out 'til Monday morning. But that's OK, too, 'cuz the party these guys throw at McMenamin's micro brewery is about the best in the business (although prime rib at Olympus last month was pretty awesome, too!).

Current entry list shows 60 cars entered and we're 22nd on the road....about where we started Olympus. But I'm looking for good things from Dmitri out here. He got real comfortable with the car and me and his driving as we ended up in Pomeroy last month....stage speeds were improving exponentially. And we're seeded in among some friends of ours George Georgakapolous in front and the Conleys right behind, so we're gonna have some good ol' fashioned mountain side racing fun!

Oh. I have a checkered record here. In '04, Dennis Martin and I fell off the mountain (literally)

Then in '06, Matthew Johnson and I won PGT out here.

And last year Justin and I tried a Formula Ford line through a crowned road L4-> that didn't quite work as planned. And that was after ripping off suspension parts and a rear bumper at PIR and then the next day running 15 stage miles with nothing but 5th gear and Matthew's crew and Otis's guys completely rebuilding the car in the basement of the Holiday Inn Express to the sound of many languages and some really esoteric music. The scene reminded me somewhat of Apocalypse Now!

Q. In what game does 2 beat 4?

2008-04-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

A. When John Lane's driving the 2 wheel drive Volvo and the rest of us are chasing him in our AWD thunder machines!

This past weekend was the Olympus International Rally held in beautiful downtown Pomeroy, WA, population 1500+/-. Neat town. I could just see it 100 years ago with a dirt road as main street and wood sidewalks...great people, too!

With my normal driver (if there is such a thing as a normal rally driver) sidelined with such worldly stuff as schoolwork, I teamed up with Dmitri Kishkarev in a 1997 Mitsu Evo4 for this West Coast swing (which will most likely include Oregon Trail next month). Dmitri is on the Matthew Johnson path (several years in a VW Golf and stepping up to AWD and some real power), although Dmitri isn't taking the indirect route through PGT. This Mitsu is an Open Class car all the way. Feels just like Dennis's although maybe a little down on power.

Dmitri is a controlled driver. He's totally aware of both his and his car's limitations, and we didn't put a wheel off all weekend. Since he wants to run three events for the total investment of towing to the Pacific Northwest from New Jersey (how the hell does a rallyist exist in NEW JERSEY?), Olympus, Oregon Trail and Rocky Mountain in BC, he announced he wanted to "take it easy" on all the components.

The stages were reputed to be wicked fast an proved out to be exactly that. Speeds over 110 were experienced by lots of teams. But I wouldn't call this really unsafe. Two of the stages had straights (with multiple crests) of 1.4 and 1.25 miles, so you just mashed the peddle and hung on. There was very little to go wrong. Derek Ringer (WRC Champ with Colin McRae and now co-driving for Travis Pastrana( claimed at the award podium that he had never ridden so fast in his entire rally career. Indeed I don't think any of us has. But it is pretty unforgettable blasting along looking down a the digital speedo on the terratrip read 118!

Rally America in their wisdom and in perfect alignment with their lawyers and insurance carriers have ruled that stages that average over 80mph will be "neutralized" by giving all the cars that accomplish that the same time that would denote 80mph. So many stages were basically 'uncontested'. It's a shame, too, because the roads were spectacular and fun. Good cambering, great spectators, and all around fun.

But back to our rally. Saturday we started off pretty tentative. I'm not sure whether it was getting used to me, or holding back on the car, or what, but we basically held our road position. I felt both Dmitri and the car were capable of better, but it's his car and his wallet!

By the end of the first day we were soundly entrenched in 17th overall place, which was a little move up the ladder (we started 22nd). We had finished 5th in the Regional event (4th Open), and there wasn't a scratch on the car. Overall a good day.

But Sunday, Dmitri must have awakened with a good Russian sneer on his face, because he and the car were in no mood to pussyfoot around. We went out and set 13th fastest time on the first stage, and we were now dicing with John Lane in the BHV (Big Honkin' Volvo) for an overall win in the second Regional event. We discussed some techniques on how to handle the communication of the long straights that worked to perfection and really clicked. There were four stages. Unfortunately the 2nd and the 4th stages were 'neutralized' by the R-A 80mph rule, so the only two that counted were the 1st and 3rd. going into the 3rd, John had us by 5 seconds or so. Dmitri took off with a mission and drove incredibly. The straights topped out at 118 (or better). All the corners were nailed and we were really cooking (we'd beaten John on this stage on the first pas, but now we had to get him by over 5 seconds!). In typical Dmitri 'attack' mode he went for the chicane at the end of the 700 yard straight a little too hot and slid to a stop inches from the chicane barrel (hitting it was 10 seconds), but then killed the engine. When restarted, we were so close to the barrel we had to back up before taking off. ARRRGGHHHH! At the finish control I asked the crew what John's time had been and we STILL BEAT HIM! But only by two seconds. So that's how 2 beats 4. Total differential 3.4 seconds.

We won Open class in the Regional, which Dmitri tells me is the first trophy this car has ever gotten, and stayed entrenched in our 17th overall position in the National.

On a scale of 1-10:

Rally location = 9.5 (hope they build a Holiday Inn Express in Pomeroy! We commuted 35 miles)

Rally roads = 10 AWESOME Great surface and engineering. I had no problem with the speeds

Officials = 10 I never had a watch that differed from a worker's by more than 1/2 second. And it was always in MY FAVOR!!!!

Evo4 = 8 A little down on power requiring some babying that I think cost us several places, but Dmitri is as much fun for me in his as Dennis is in his....tough cars, great drive trains.

Dmitri = 9 Wish we could have pushed it Saturday. A little tentative on Saturday...rusty since no driving since Tall Pines...all that was gone by Sunday, 'tho!

Me = 8.5 A little late on a call or two, lost once or twice in successive 6's, but I'm hearing everybody had those problems.

Humor of the weekend was the Jemba note R3+ 1000. About 1/3 through the 1000 yards with the speedo reading 110 or more, Dmitri implored urgently over the intercom "what's next!!!!!" Knowing we had another 500+ yards I calmly replied "Don't' know. Let me look" that broke up the tension. Dmitri had heard I could be an asshole!

Until Oregon! Or whenever something else neat happens.

Good luck on finals, Heath!!!!

Wow...it's been a long cold Winter

2008-04-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

I'm sworn to secrecy about Heath's and my adventures at 100AW. We consider ourselves spanked and ready to proceed. Heath DID, however, with one small exception, drive an excellent event significantly improving his speed factor, and I DID, however, with one small exception co-drive fairly well. I give the weekend a B+....next on the list for us will be STPR.

But this weekend I'm headed to beautiful downtown Pomeroy, WA to take part in my first Olympus (as a competitor). I last attended this event in 1987 when it was a full works championship event, and it was on the west side of the state near Seattle and Tacoma then (and is now, except for this year). This year it's based out of the Pomeroy on the east side of the state where the locals hold Regional events because road-use permits were not clearing fast enough. It's been REAL WET over on the coast. We're expecting very fast smooth gravel based roads and we have one pass recce with Jemba notes, so "courage" will be the by-word of the day

Since Heath is mired in schoolwork for the next month, I'm at Olympus with Dmitri Kishkarev in his Mitsu Evo. I've watched Dmitri in this car at a few events in the past, and we pal'd around at 100AW a little but he could not find a co-driver for that event. Evos are cool. Dennis Martin and I do well in one and Dmitri doesn't seem to crash much, so I'm looking for a really fun weekend.

I'll have a full report upon my return!!!! Maybe even during if there's any wi-fi in Eastern Washington!

Off to the races!!!

2008-02-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

Heath (my driver of the year) arrives at St. Louis International Airport at 9:00 tomorrow night. From then on we're on "Rally Time."

The car should be in pristine condition, and will have new seats with side head restraints on them. I became a believer in those at Oregon last year with Justin as we smacked a bank with MY SIDE so hard I watched the side window just 'pop' out. The amazing part was using a combination of the HANS device and the side movement protection of the seat, I never had even the slightest twinge of neck pain. I'm a fan! So that was one of my provisos in getting into Heath's car this season. We would both have that protection.

Heath's car is well equipped with a Coralba C-Giant Rally Computer. This thing has more computing power than computers the State Department used during the Cold War. The manual which I downloaded from the web is about 1/4" thick. Matthew Johnson had it's little brother, so I'm somewhat familiar, but this mother can get complicated. It will start a clock at the start line when your wheel first moves (thus eliminating your need to remember to start a watch). At the finish it will give you Time, Distance, Average Speed, Top Speed, and probably current status of the Dow Jones Industrials! If we've stopped to fix a flat (no, no, no, no, no!!!!) it will tell us what speed we need to travel in order to avoid road points (I thought that was MY job!). Anyway, I've been studying up on it and I'm ready!

Heath's been reviewing in-car videos of Matthew Johnson and me and Dennis Martin and me just to get used to the cadences I use. They are different for both those drivers, so i hope Heath has an idea what he WANTS. Matthew could hold 3+ actions in advance...so could Dennis mostly. Justin would have to be hearing the action he's just about to enter. So pacing is totally different with different drivers. We'll be working that out.

Strategy? Well Heath's youth has him a little frustrated at his starting position (32 out of 56; 10th PGT car out of 13), but that's of no concern to me. This season is going to be a process. Placements will fall into place when they fall into place. A couple of things will happen at 100AW. First, we'll get a benchmark to build on. Between 100AW and our next event, Oregon Trails, Heath has finals (at Michigan Tech in Houghton, MI) and NO TIME to rebuild a wrecked car. So we're certainly hoping that will not happen. We'll end up with a lot of in-car to analyze. I remember after Oregon '06 (first event with Johnson) I spent hours and hours pouring over the tapes and talking with Matthew and it made a world of difference for STPR. Heath and I will be doing the same thing.

Heath and I do get to run recce (see all the racing stages before actually racing them) on Thursday...it's legal....a couple of the national events are starting to allow this. that will give us time to sort out a little about how he wants to hear things, as well as how he actually sees things. The co-driver sits on the passenger side and basically makes changes to the notes that the driver dictates. Neither of us have much experience with recce, so I'm pretty sure we'll mostly just benefit from a day behind the wheel and a good look at the roads. I remember being totally worn out after recce last year with Justin, but we were attempting to do some major eticing to the notes (that didn't work so well!).

So off we go for the '06 season. New driver. New Crew. Lots of old friends in PGT to go chase! And starting on my home turf. Can't wait!

Latest rally prodigy teams up with wise old mentor for Rally-America 2008 Season.

2008-02-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

Nunnemacher at 100AW, 2006

Nunnemonster Rallysport announced that their driver Heath Nunnemacher will team with veteran co-driver Kim DeMotte for the 2008 Rally-America Season. This pattern falls in line with that last two successful pairings of Kyle Sarasin with Mika Johanssen, and Chris Duplessis with Martin Headland, both relative youngsters riding with experienced co-drivers in mentor roles.

Nunnemacher spent the 2007 season with his mom Heidi Nunnemacher sorting out the 2002 Subaru WRX and getting valuable seat time while training at Team O’Neil Rally School and Car Control Center in New Hampshire.

“I watched Heath and Heidi most of last season, while co-driving for Justin Pritchard and Dennis Martin, and being very comfortable with the PGT environment, (DeMotte and Matthew Johnson teamed up as National PGT champs in 2006) watched his speed factors steadily increase. Heath’s going to continue to improve and give the regulars (Stephan Verdier, Pat Moro, Travis Hanson, the Conley’s and more) some great competition.

“I’m totally excited about having an extremely experienced co-driver call the notes for Heath this season.” Heidi Nunnemacher told us. “I’ve had an incredibly fun time co-driving for Heath, but he’s ready to go to a new level, and he needs someone like Kim with the experience to help get him there. I’m delighted to continue to crew and can’t wait to see them compete.”

Nunnemacher is a full time student at Michigan Tech in Houghton, MI, sometimes known as Rally U. since a vast number of graduates are deeply involved in the sport.

DeMotte is Management Consultant, Speaker and Author who’s developed the Corporate CoDriver Programs for Executives wanting to improve their communications and relationships with their direct reports.

The team’s first event will be the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood in Salem, MO the weekend of February 22 – 23.

LSPR - Reunion tour re-started

2007-11-06T12:47:00.000-08:00

So being at a rally with ALL the drivers you rode with in a season is a little like being at a cocktail party with all your ex-wives. But all my ex-wives are pretty good people and so are Justin and Chris. This weekend I was in the right seat for Dennis Martin.

Now Dennis has a......reputation......and not undeserved, of wrecking cars. The last BIG off he had was in the '05 LSPR with Alan Perry running 3rd on the road when he REALLY regretted the used tires he was on...but that's a whole 'nuther story as they say.

I called Justin in late September and inquired about his LSPR plans and he said he had none. So we agreed that I was a free man to co-drive for Dennis and Bill Westrick said he would sit in with Justin, so it seemed like everybody was covered.

Dennis and I had tried this reunion at Ojibwe in August only to suffer the 10 year old car syndrome. But it was the "nice" kind of dnf!

Dennis has an honest good speed factor, so we started in 7th position out of 69 cars...we would be delighted to finish there. As a matter of fact we would take anything in the top ten. So after pooching up the new Super Special in Houghton we headed off for Herman Truck Trail. Not one of Dennis's best efforts, but we survived. See the video...pay particular attention about 3:06 into this video!!!

Pat Moro found this puddle a few cars later and completely ended his bid for the PGT Championship.Photo by Art Partyka!!

This was not either of our best events. Dennis was rusty and the Hankooks he had on didn't seem to be able to hook up with the new additional 35 hp he'd found at the wheels. To be fair these were the "old" soft compound (70's) and most were on the new "71's", but it was very difficult to keep the car in straight line.

However we look at our "rustiness", we had a couple of top 4 stage times and most fell in the top 8 and finished a very respectable 8th overall in a very competitive field.

But what else went on you ask?

Let's take my drivers by the numbers. The last guy I drove for didn't have too stellar an event.

Chris Duplessis has now "joined the club!". Martin was still grinning with a lap full of windshield!

And then there was my OTHER driver. Justin and Bill ended Brockway rather abruptly. Bill's GPS said they went from something like 60 to 0 in 1/10 of a second. Both were hauled away for observation, but seemed mostly unscathed. A testimony to HANS devices for sure. So it seems I need to go to a casino and gamble. I sure picked the right one for LSPR!

Another season wraps up. I took points in PGT, Gr2 and Open, so suspect I can be officially termed a rally ho. I ran with three great drivers and am certainly open for negotiation for the 2008 season (R-A, NASA, and maybe even CARS!!!)

2007 Rally America Group 2 Champion Crowned!

2007-09-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

Well…officially he’ll get his hardware in a month after LSPR, I suppose.

Thanks Art Partyka for the above photo which explains a lot about the camber adjuster being out of whack on the right front strut when we pulled into Hayden!

Chris Duplessis has run just 5 events this season in his Duplessis Racing (ne: Pooh Corner Farm Racing) Group 2 VW Golf. He just won all five of them. From time to time he got pushed by the likes of Michel Hoche-Mong….and this weekend a little by Jimmy Keeney, but for the most part everyone was eating his dust….even on wet courses. And while the championship is decided on one’s best 7 out of the 9 national events on the Rally America tour, Chris’s 110 points in 5 events is mathematically unbeatable…..so it’s over.

Martin Headland (Chris's normal, if there is such a thing for co-drivers) co-driver had another commitment this weekend and asked if I was available....seems none of my regular (if there is such a thing for drivers) drivers was interested in the long tow, so I was. After some hasty negotiations with Team O'Neil Driving School and GoFast Energy Drink, they had (barely) the funds to haul the mighty Golf to Steamboat Springs....so we were on!

Now let me tell you how it is to ride with this VW wunderkind. First, the car is significantly lighter than most of the cars I’ve had the privilege of co-driving in. That makes it nimble and easy to change direction and yaw. Most PGT and Open cars are all wheel drive and require some fancy gyrations to get around differently configured corners. This VW (at least this one driven by this driver) seemed to change direction as if it was reading my mind (I’m the co-driver….the guy who knows what’s going to happen around that next corner!) and I’m not even the guy with the steering wheel….or more importantly the brake pedal. You see, Chris is a protégé of Tim O’Neil, Left Foot Braking King of the World….and actually trains for Tim at the Driving School. The only car I’ve gone deeper and harder into any corner in was Justin Pritchard’s ’66 Austin Mini. Now THERE’s a light car. But in the right hands cars this light seem to defy physics.

I had people approaching me (noticing the semi-permanent grin on my face) suggesting that they KNEW why I was grinning. They had seen us at this corner or that corner and our approach speeds, time-in-transition, and even sometimes exit speeds seemed to be better than a lot of the big dogs at the front of the pack. The list of reasons we didn’t win this rally overall is actually quite short. Horsepower: this car develops maybe 115 at the wheels….at sea level….we were between 7,000 and 8,500 feet…stock engines gasp at those altitudes. Tires: Sunday, we could have used bigger chunks out of the Michelins. We took everybody’s advice about cutting the tires, and these were the team’s last four, so hacking them up beyond future use was not wise. He’ll probably run LSPR on this set. Talent would not be one of the reasons.

That’s the other thing I enjoy about this team. They are pure grass roots rally. Chris is the next Matthew Johnson, or for that matter John Buffum….rally gods who scraped together whatever was needed and built their own cars….towed 1000’s of miles, raced, won, towed 1000’s of miles back. In a parking lot full of huge trailers, and box trucks full of entire spare cars and blue shirted mechanics, Chris’s brother Forest sits….waiting to spring into action….which, was, and pretty much has been all season, boringly unnecessary.

FLASH! Hey Subaru! Hey Mitsubishi (well maybe not Mitsubishi)! Hey Volkswagen! You want team driver that’ll bring back the car in one piece AND win! He’s re-writing the book that for so many years has dictated that one simply HAS to go over the edge a few times costing multiple shells and untold paint jobs. I think Chris doesn’t believe that.

Now on to some other stuff that happened this past weekend at Rally Colorado. First, congrats to Matthew and Jeremy for finally cashing another Subaru check. Like Chris, Matthew simply blew away the competition. Stephan Verdier and MJ were having a good go at it, with Pat Moro in the shadows and the Conley’s in Pat’s shadow….when the ol’ WRX “Y” pipe issue started popping again…literally. I think Stephan lost 2 and Moro 1. These could have cost Verdier his win…not sure…don’t have the scores in front of me. But this little glitch first reared its ugly head at STPR. Subaru must have changed it’s supplier of these things, because they’ve become the next ‘fuseable link” in WRX PGT cars when the temperature’s over 80. Although trannies seem to be the other one that ruins everybody’s day. Johnson had to change his out after the press stage.

As it stands, the PGT championship will come down to LSPR…..Verdier can be the spoiler, but MJ has to win and Pat can’t be any lower than second for Pat to hold the lead. A lot more exciting than last year.

Oh yeah…there’s still a good fight among the money teams….SRT-USA got zapped with an unspecified “unsportsmanlike” penalty of five points for each of their team drivers. I heard through the vine-o-grapes that this infraction actually occurred at Ojibwe, but can’t confirm…so we’ll leave it at rumor status. Anyway, that neatly tightens things up among the top 4 for a super showdown at LSPR….stay tuned!

OK….driving back on boring I-70 in Eastern Colorado….I’ll think of more for another post when the weekend all settles in

Over and out from the current president (there’ll be lots more) of the Christopher (Robin?) Duplessis Fan Club.

Even a BIGGER Age Differential!!!

2007-09-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Pooh Corner Farm and Pooh are getting together!

Duplessis Motorsports headquartered at Pooh Corner Farm in Mason Twp, Maine is teaming up with Pooh (moi!) from 100 Acre Wood fame to compete at Rally Colorado September 22nd and 23rd in Steamboat Springs, CO. That's really the 100 Acre Wood.....at an other rally!

Please no honey jars stuck on our noses!

Chris Duplessis, age about 12 (it's ALL relative!) is driving the G2 Golf and currently leading the Rally America Group 2 standings. He's also tied for second in the 2WD with the fire breathing Dodge SRT-4 Gr5 car of Cary Kendall just 5 points behind the highly supported Ford Focus of Kyle Sarasin and Mikael Johanssen.

Chris is an instructor at Tim O'Neils Driving School in New Hampshire, and so has the ability to....practice....a lot.

Martin Headland, Chris's normal co-driver (if there is such a thing as "normal" for this profession) has a conflict this weekend and asked me to sit with Chris and keep him focused.

So far this season I have co-driven for Justin Pritchard at 4 events, the last one (Rally West Virginia) being highly successful, and Dennis Martin (see the post below).

This ride with Chris is really exciting as it appears he can mathematically wrap up the Gr2 championship here. It was here last year that Matthew Johnson and I technically wrapped up the PGT championship, but we didn't know if the Foust/Crouch car would make LSPR or not. It didn't. I really want to be a part of that in this young future champion's career.

More from Steamboat!

Reunion Tour

2007-08-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

Possibly the fastest guy I ever co-drove for is Dennis Martin. At his peak about 2 years ago, he was a consistent top 5 finisher in an aging Mitsubishi Evo4. Unlike Matthew Johnson who is fearless and occasionally reckless, Dennis is reckless and occasionally fearless. He worries about what might happen as opposed to what IS happening. Hence, our record through the 2003 and 2004 seasons was top 5 or so finishes or crash. We pretty much supported stock in whoever makes bondo!

So when Justin opted out of Ojibwe this year for a race date at Mosport, Dennis and I hooked up to see if we still could do this.

Dennis has found (or they found him) some really gung-ho guys in Green Bay....Jim, Curt, Colin and Mark who have decided the Evo is a worthy project and brought it a long way back from it's last....less-than-successful outing, the infamous roll at LSPR in 2004 (with Alan Perry on the right side....I was tied up with the curse of work on rally weekend....won't let THAT happen again).

The car looks great (Sophia Loren still looks great too....surgery is mahvelous). And now it even sounded great, went great, and handled great....hmmmmmm. This might work.

All that was to be decided was whether or not Dennis and I could still communicate well at 100 mph on a one lane gravel road.

We took the car out on a "shake-down" stage Thursday afternoon...only made one run (low on fuel and none to be had until Friday). Notes worked...car worked....Dennis was quick....this was looking pretty good.

Due to Dennis's great finish on LSPR with Alex Kihurani last October, he has a terrific speed factor which got us 6th out of 47 cars on the road....right between Matthew Johnson and Stephan Verdier....two gritty PGT competitors trying to knock off Pat Moro from the current throne of PGT. Moro, who recently invested all of his spare capital competing at X Games, was sitting this one out....not time to get the car back into PGT shape after making legal modifications to it for X Games.

Well, readers, that's about where the good news ends and the bad news begins.

Less than a mile into the first real stage Friday afternoon, the snazzy nomex suit of Jeremy Wimpey came running up the road waving a triangle and an OK sign....MJ had executed a snap roll on the third serious turn of the whole rally and buried the Hankook-mobile off in a ditch with lots of bruises (to the car, not them). He was out....already. That left Verdier as the only other serious PGT contender left to cruise through the event to his 22 points and $2500 Subaru contingency money. No sweat!

Meanwhile, Dennis and I pull up to the start of the next stage....we'd been here several years before as unwilling spectators watching cars start while ours was on a trailer after yet another DNF. Now it was our turn to go have some fun!

As a team, we were clicking pretty well. I was about 9.5 out of 10 on the notes and Dennis was pretty close to that driving...although he clearly wasn't taking any chances.....and we were still turning top 7-8 times on these stages. There would always be tomorrow to turn up the wick if we felt there was a reason to.

About half way through this stage, Dennis noticed the car sputtering occasionally...then more frequently...then eventually stopping. Our day was over. Dennis spent a good 20-25 minutes with the tools he had on board trying to find the source of the problem, but to no avail. We got towed out, loaded up on our trailer and went back to the motel to try to find out what the issue was, and re-enter the Regional event the next morning.

It took about an hour to track down the culprit. A braided fuel line hose on the vacuum side of the fuel cell was "collapsing". Braided hose is only braided on the outside to keep fatiguing neoprene from bursting under pressure.....but there isn't any on the inside to keep it from collapsing under vacuum. That's what this did, in essence choking off the fuel supply. When we by-passed this hose the car ran great. By 9:00AM the next morning the car was purring and chipper and ready to go again, so Dennis plunked down $100 and we entered the Regional event just to have fun and get some seat time.

The first stage ran fine....well, fuel flow-wise anyway. The radiator cap came ajar and so for several miles we had steam billowing out from under the hood and used the windshield wipers frequently to scrape off ethylene glycol from the windshield. It certainly compromised our time, but still we were in the top 10. Dennis took quick stock of the problem, borrowed some water from the intercooler spray reservoir, and we set off to catch up with our spot in line.

The next stage was a long one....13+miles and we were looking forward to finally letting the ol' girl run. Ah, the vagaries of rally! About half way into this one the fuel issue popped up again. We muscled on to the finish, but the car was definitely protesting it's lack of fuel. We had a 3 miler and a 9 miler to go and then we'd be in service and we could dive more into the problem.

2 miles into the 3 miler...she just gave up the ghost. We'd get about 100-200 yards of go fast out of her and she'd crap out again. We pulled off for a good 10 minutes while Dennis did everything in his power including change a fuel pump (which actually worked for a bit). We set off again trying to reach the end of this short stage, but our speed ability was endangering everyone, so we pulled off at a bannered trail and WAY off the road so as not to be noticed by competing cars. I got on the radio and declared ourselves to the radio net as OK, but out of the rally. Sweep came by and got us....AGAIN and towed us out to our waiting crew...where we kicked back and called it a weekend.

We mapped our way back around to a marshal position and watched everybody come through a tricky set of turns, and the field looked pretty much in tact through this second to last stage.

But boy did things change after that! The last stage was 24 miles long...at dusk....in the dust....and it took it's toll!

First, Stephan Verdier who only had to coast to victory somehow found himself nosed into a lake. Then Tanner Foust...solidly in second place overall and challenging for the lead found ANOTHER OJIBWE ROCK (he had found one the size of a doghouse last year to lose the PGT and the podium finish to Matthew Johnson and I) which knocked him from second to 14th and out of contention.

Piotr Wiktorczyk who had arrived in a new old 2006 ex 2002 PGT Subaru WRX was found not to be in PGT compliance, and so was penalized 3 places in class (thus removing him from any contingency money) leaving Heath Nunnemacher and his mom Heidi as the PGT winners! The real winner in PGT, of course, is Pat Moro who stayed home in Ohio and who's only real competition both dnf'd for the weekend. So Moro closes in on the championship having not won a single event.

Next stop Rally Colorado (formerly "Cog") in Steamboat Springs....but I bet I'll have some more words for the CoDriver Blog before then,

FINALLY!!!

2007-08-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

we learned some more about "cutting"!

We had a good weekend....no, let me correct that. We had a GREAT weekend!

While the rest of the Rally World was either in or focusing on Los Angeles for the X Games, Justin and I took the opportunity to run NASA's Rally West Virginia.....What a jewel of a rally!!!!! For only it's second year, this is an event not to be missed if for nothing else than the FUN FACTOR!

Justin spend a lot of time (and money) getting underneath the car and sorting out suspension issues and steering issues we identified at STPR. The car just FELT better driving around town. Didn't even squeak or creak anymore! We would compete in NASA's Showroom Stock Class. That's there designation of Rally-America's PGT class.

We came here for practice. With our problems at Oregon and STPR, we just simply haven't worked out the driver-co-driver stuff....not enough miles! So Justin called me and asked if i'd want to do Rally West Virginia. It's close, cheap, and we'd heard the roads were great. So that's what we did!

There were lots of buddies there...first, the class act of this event, Seamus Burke, but Matt Johnson's '07 co-driver, Jeremy Wimpey was there co-driving for his brother, Josh. Kyle Sarasin and Mikael Johannson were there like us...for practice. Loads of Irish in loads of Evos. This was going to be fun!

We just didn't know how much fun! Being in "practice" mode, I was not even aware that we were in second place OVERALL by the end of the first afternoon. We'd run about 30 stage miles. And these were great miles for us. Repeated stages. That's really good for practice, because you actually get to go out and FIX things you didn't do right the first time. Friday gave us one rough/tight stage and one fast/open stage...we did them each 3 times, one way or the other...actually we got delayed and canceled the last one...but nobody cared. We were feeling good about the outing, but had no idea how well we were doing.

The next morning's confusion didn't help any. Somehow the scoring crew couldn't get it all sorted out by the restart time Saturday, so we STILL didn't realize our position. After all, we're just here for practice, right? So they restarted us in the same start order we had Saturday. We were 8th on the road out of 39 cars. No problems.

Saturday started off with two stages we did three times in the same direction...again....great practice. Somewhere in here, unbeknownst to us, Seamus had his gearbox stick in 2nd gear...and lost 6 1/2 minutes. Not until Eddie Fries showed me his score page did I realize....WE WERE WINNING THE FREAKIN' RALLY!!!!! OMG! Now the Co-Driver dilemma. Here's the situation:

We're leading the rally by 1:05. There are 5 stages left. Seamus is taking 10-15 seconds off our times on each stage (Seamus has a REAL CAR...Evo9 300+HP, diffs, suspension, 6 speeds,). So it certainly appears Seamus will catch us and pass us before the rally ends. If i tell Justin there's the possibility he pushes it and that's not what we're here for. So I don't.

Then we spent 45 minutes waiting for this next stage to start and finally...it was cancelled. Now Burke only had 5 stages to catch us...hmmmmmm! And then before they let us transit this stage, they announced the final stage of the day would be canceled due to the time lost here. Now Burke/Fries only had 4 stages to catch us! Eddie was continuously recalculating how many seconds per mile they were going to have to take off us....and the number ket going up!!!!

I opted not to mention all this to Justin and see how Burke/Fries did on the next section of two stages. They took 38 seconds off us on the next stage, and 17 on the next. It appeared this was not going to be a problem for Seamus. With two stages to go and only 10 seconds separating us I finally apprised Justin of the situation. He had some idea we were close, but had no knowledge of Burkes 6 1/2 minute problem...he ultimately agreed with my decision not to make this part of our program for Saturday.

Ulimately Burke beat us by 45 seconds....we could never have held him off, but it WAS possible his transmission problems could re-surface. They didn't.

So we won Showroom Stock, and took second overall!

It was tough for us not having our usual measuring sticks there, Johnson, Verdier, Moro, but keeping Burke in sight and staying ahead of Charlie Sherill (another Evo) was just what the doctor ordered for the Pritchard/DeMotte team.

Justin drove a terrific "practice session". He didn't put a wheel off (accidentally anyway!) all weekend. He was truly committed over most of the 5's and 6's, and took jumps and crests flat out. If you've ever done anything when you were just "in the zone", you know how we felt this past weekend.

Justin's off for a race at Mosport on the Ojibwe weekend, so I'll be doing a reunion tour with Dennis Martin in his Evo....more to follow!

2007-06-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

Wellsboro, was not so well.

After a hectic five week rehab of the car (read below about the exploits at Oregon Trail), we all convened on Wellsboro, PA for like the gazillionth running of STPR.

I drove over with Mike Houser of 100AW Map Guy fame, and Justin drove in with his Dad and Paul Devco. Eric Fraser and Rob Jozwiak came down from Windsor ON (eh?) to help out on crew.

We had secured the "Farmhouse" at Ski Sawmill about 18 miles south of Wellsboro as the PGT compound. Us, Matthew Johnson, Pat Moro and Travis Hanson all had crews staying there and it was an absolute brain trust of PGTers...most importantly Subaru WRX PGTers. I think at one point we had 28 people sleeping around the house. (There are 34 beds, so it's not like people were sleeping on the kitchen drainboard or anything).

Justin was suffering from some plague and sounded awful, felt awful, but soldiered on. The car seemed to run OK and drove down the road straight, and after Oregon, that's about all we could hope for.

Friday opened up to paperwork...registration, scrutineering (Justin's fog allowed him to leave the log book and insurance papers at home....that should have told him something). I brought a new Peltor Amp (the old one shot craps again at Oregon), so we would at least be able to talk to each other. We went out to run the shakedown stage.

We agreed to run through at 7/10 and just start to regain the "rhythm" of the car on gravel. We were doing exactly that (slow and smooth) when right before the end of the 3.4 mile practice stage the engine just quit. No warning, no sputtering....just stopped. Since the Finish was on an uphill, there was no getting the car to the end. Hansons came by and towed us around and back into the service....where it was nmow beginning to pour rain.

Par Moro had suffered a split "Y-Pipe" in the turbo intercooler system earlier and replaced it only to have the new one split. Lo and behold that's what happened to us. Callnig every Subaru dealer within 100 miles from within Pat's box truck yielded NO Y-Pipes. Back to the Farmhouse.

Before the night was over, Moro and Pritchard had fashioned repaired Y-pipes using threaded iron pipe, radiator hose and clamps....lots of clamps...no kiddin'. Reminded me of McGiver!

I'll send you over to Justin's Blog for the gory details....but suffice it to say...we were slow, tentative, getting better and then the gremlin hit...or maybe it was just a sleeping gremlin from Oregon. Seems the right front control arm broke...and it probably started in Oregon, but it became evident on Stage 6 where Justin was spinning the wheel wildly to get the wheels to turn. We felt insecure enough about this situation (imagine the steering falling apart at 90 in a tight left-hander).

So if we scrape together enough rubles we'll take a shot at Maine. We saved a lot of money staying at the Farmhouse, and we DIDN'T significantly break the car, so we'll see. This car is frustrating...but then and Ex-Verdier, Ex-Langbein car simply coulnd't be expected to be of showroom quality. And now WE'VE put our stamp (literally) of approval on her!

OTPR'07

2007-04-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Well, THAT should explain the weekend!

This event and I have a thing going. In '04 Dennis Martin and I rolled off the mountainside. In '06, Matthew Johnson and I won PGT and finished 5th overall....and this year? Well, read on.

It was a character building weekend. The intrepid George Beckerman (another vintage rallyist....not the cars...the rallyist!) stopped by my home on Sunday before the event to pick up my "stuff" and head to Hillsboro, OR (a suburb of Portland) where this year's edition of the Oregon Trail Performance Rally was to be held. He arrived Wednesday night and checked in to our hotel and everything was just going swimmingly. Curt Faigle from the 100AW committee and I jumped on our Southwest Airlines flight the next morning and got into PDX right on schedule Thursday afternoon. Justin got to his hotel at the airport (because it was right down near where registration and tech were going to be the next morning) about midnight. All was in place.

Friday morning we went through scrutineering and got all our other paperwork taken care of and headed out to Portland International Raceway where the organizers run some short "public relations" stages from 3:00 to 9:00 or so. It was fun, but not real rallying.

And that's where the problems began...let me start the list!

1. Our super-duper Peltor Communications system failed. Would not work. Period. We borrowed a portable version from ACP's co-driver, Marc Goldfarb for the duration of the event.

2. We had to run the PIR racetrack on worn out gravel tires, 'cuz it didn't make much sense to buy $1000 worth of tires for 2 miles of racing....but just about everybody else had some from somewhere. Even at that, Justin's track experience kept us in the hunt losing only about 6 seconds on those stages.

3. L3+ rocks outside. We got past that, but in the next R3, we clipped a rock and tore a lot of the right rear off the car. Body work, bumper cover and bent the rear control arm. Which meant we had to limp around to the FTC and get a bad time....AND....figure out a way to fix it in 35 minutes before we ran two more stages. Thanks to the team of Mennig and Schnell (local rallyists with big hearts and GREAT air tools, and Jonathon Bottoms who had the parts, we got it all patched up for the last two stages....which actually went very well. At least something went well!

4. By the second stage on Saturday we had jumped a little hard into a ditch on the left coming out of a right hander and caused something in the transmission to make it take away 2nd gear. Now THAT's annoying. We cam into service at the Vernonia School where George (the aforementioned George) and Lew Bailen (my old friend from the 100AW committee who'd moved to the PNW to be nears his daughters and thier families) were awaiting an easy service. Mostly all we could do was change the tranny fluid and hope.

5. Driving compromised by the missing 2nd gear, we drove quite well on several more stages until 3rd gear disappeared....than shortly 4th gear. We drove most of a 17 mile stage on 1st and 5th gear alone! UGLY! Cost us about 8 minutes we guess. We had a spare transmission, but no skills to get it swapped......hmmmm

6. Upon exiting that last stage and facing a 30 miles transit back to Hillsboro, we were fairly sure the 5th gear would take us that far. WRONG! We hardly got out of the FTC before the car pretty well just refused to travel any further. The 00 car of Bruce Davis and Jimmy Brandt agreed to two us back to Hillsboro (allowed) so we could check into the last control of the day and get to work on the car. 50mph up US26 and something shifts in the transmission and all the wheels on the Subie lock up for a few feet.....then let go. We decide to put the car on the trailer (George is by now following us back to Hillsboro). I get into text messaging with Matthew (Johnson, PGT God and knower of everything Subaru/PGT) and ask if he and his crew would like a little practice on a tranny Saturday night. True to Matthews unbridled enthusiasm he texted me back "bring it on!".

7. Thinking we're "just" swapping a tranny, we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express garage (which looked like a full rally prep shop.....4 cars on jackstands, rock/rap music rupturing the concrete and a dozen guys buzzing around Matthew's car (trans went on that one too), Otis Dimiter's car, Pat Moro's car and Matt Iorio's car. A quick inspection reveals the little highway adventure has shattered three of the four drive shafts and Otis's crew jumps in. Unbelievably 3 1/2 hours later the car drives out ready to go again Sunday morning. THANK YOU MATTHEW, JOHN, OTIS, JEREMY, and ANY GUYS WHO'S LEGS WERE STICKING OUT FROM UNDER THE CAR WHO'S NAMES I DO NOT KNOW. YOU WERE INCREDIBLE!

8. There's a little difference between the transmission we removed and the one we replaced it with. The first box had "diffs"....limited slip differentials front to rear and in front. This one was a stock box with open diffs there. The limited slip Kaaz diff was still in the rear, but as we transited to the first stage (35 miles) it was making some very "screaming" noises. So driving this car on Sunday was going to be a lot different than driving it Friday or Saturday.

9. We ALMOST ran one full clean stage....but Justin and I got confused at a "T" intersection and he went left when we wanted to go right. Postings on Specialstage.com indicate we were not alone in that silliness. We ran VERY well on that stage...things were looking up and we were hoping to make a run at Subiegal Janie Thomas and Pat Moro who was only 4 seconds ahead of her.

10. R3+ into L4. Justin got a little too high on the crown in the L4, and it was over in a flash. Full chat in 3rd gear we slid off sideways into a bank fortunately impacting evenly from the front bumper to the missing rear bumper (on my side, of course), and laying on the co-driver's side. We had seen Mike Goodwin in EXACTLY this position yesterday....including the turbo fire that ensued. We emptied two extinguishers efficiently on the turbo trying to cool it so it would not keep igniting the oil that was dripping on it....and ran out. THANK YOU Kyle Sarasin for stopping and lending us yours...it did the trick and we prevented a red cross situation AND a completely lost car.

11. Sweep got us turned over. We replaced the flat right front tire and got towed out to Timber Junction on Rt. 26 where George and Lew were awaiting us. We had no real reason to go back to Hillsboro, so we decided to head to Lew's beautiful estate in Camas Washington (just across the river from Portland) where we were going to spend the night. Burgers and beers were in order. The actual body damage was over-comeable. a couple of doors, a rear bumper cover and some juscious tapping/bondo/and vinyl and we were good to go for Olympus. Then Justin looked under the hood. The wiring harness looked like burned spaghetti....along with some tubular noodles that used to be hoses. The turbo fire had taken it's toll.

So Lew took Justin to the airport (he left at midnight to work Monday) and the rest of us headed for bed. George (CHANGE OF PLANS, GEORGE) left the next morning and we'll see everybody at STPR in June.

We were but one of the sad tales of the weekend. It appears fully 50% of the starters failed to finish. The roads were incredible. I'm really going to miss running Olympus....I've never had the pleasure.

Nuthin' you can say, but "that's racin'."

You can go see the Driver's point of view here.

100 Acre Wood Post Mortem

2007-03-02T13:52:00.000-08:00

And I thought Winnie-the-Pooh was a friend of mine!

The 100 Acre Wood this past weekend was the best of all the 13 that have ever been conducted. Awesome congratulations to Tom vonHatten and his entire committee for what could end up to be Rally of the Year!!!

Now to our woes.

First many thanks to Carl Meyer at Webster Groves Subaru for having faith in us and sponsoring us for this event. We did a dealership promotion at his store in Webster Groves on Wednesday afternoon/evening and turned a lot of heads (and a few people who actually came in to chat!)

I swear the sun came up an hour too early Thursday morning. Tom and the intrepid crew tackled the concept of a pre-event Notes Familiarization Pass (NFP). It gave those of us with the ability to attend an opportunity to see all the stages with our stage notes in hand for editing. This is only the second time this has been done in Rally-America/SCCA history (it has been done over on the NASA side before) and it was extremely well received. I'm afraid the 100AW crew has put other committees under pressure to offer the same.

Friday morning was sorta wasted tinkering with the alignment on the #28. We opted not to go do the shakedown stage as we were aware of it's inconsistency with the real stage roads....there was really nothing to learn.

By Noon we were in the Parc Expose at the Salem Wal-Mart lot. It was cramped, but adequate and I understand the committee had a hard time securing even that much space. But it served well for Friday's stages.

Off to the real racing. We were kinda pokey on the first and second stage, but the third stage we felt pretty good...several places higher on the ranking for Scotia Valley S-N! Then we sorta slipped back into mediocre again. I'm getting used to notes (edited notes at that) and Justin's getting used to it being OK that the car slides!!!! By the end of Friday's racing we were in fourth position in PGT. Matthew Johnson and Stephan Verdier (yeah, the RETIRED Stephan Verdier) were defining how to drive PGT while the Hansons, Kenny Bartram, Pat Moro and us were tightly bunched trying out for third. Good racing!

Oh. did i tell you it had been "Chamber of Commerce weather" Thursday and Friday? We obviously pissed someone off at the C of C, cuz the weather went all to Hell the next day. Absolute CONSTANT rain ALL day. But that didn't bother us too much, 'cuz we didn't run all day. On the first stage (Southern Loop) at the long low water bridge after Billy Mead's house we hit the water too hard and momentarily shoved the radiator back. That cracked a mounting arm, which ended up putting a 1/4" hole in the radiator. The car immediately started to steam up. Justin was sliding farther and farther down in his seat to be able to see out the bottom of the windshield! then we passed Matthew...pretty much wrapped around a tree, but displaying the OK sign. This sucks! Our chief competitor has gone and done something stupid and we're not going to finish the stage, 'cuz we're overheating like crazy. Two miles later we pulled over and spent the next hour displaying the OK sign in a thunderstorm.

Steve Lauer our absolutely fantastic crew of the week came and got us (following Rob Wright's fabulous service route instructions....thanks, Rob!) and using a latex glove and a bumper mount device had us running and driving back to Salem in no time. Justin offered him the right seat on the spot!

We caught up with MJ at the local Chinese Buffet and just sort of chilled the rest of the afternoon. None of us felt much like watching rally cars. We'd all seen plenty.

MJ says he's got another shell and 7 weeks to get ready for Oregon. We're trying to put that trip together, 'cuz the tow out's good for two events (Oregon Trail in April and Olympus in May).

Oh, just to add to the PGT misery, Hanson's totalled their PGT car while running in second position I think on the second to last stage. PGT stands for Pushing you Guts To win!

Upcoming 100 Acre Wood

2007-02-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

Wow! How do I talk about this one coming up? Shortly after I first moved to St. Louis in the early '70's I put together an interpid band of people who almost understood what rallying was. In 1977 the St. Louis group ran the first "Rally in the 100 Acre Wood" based out of Rolla, MO and running mostly in Dent and Crawford Counties.

Here it is 30 years later and for the first time....I'm going to be a competitor! First I have to thank the committee for letting me off the hook. Second I need to thank my wife who is doing what she and I TOGETHER did for the past years. I'm not allowed to know anything about the course. Although I am assisting in printing ID badges for the workers.

But it's a very weird feeling. I'm the guy who can walk in and out of commissioners offices in Dent, Crawford, Iron and Washington Counties....and in a good year, sometimes Reynolds County! Now my succession team is doing that. I have all the faith in the world in this team.

And it's going to be the biggest and best ever....over 60 entries and the cream of the crop!

We will be running what's called one-pass recce on Thursday. They're going to let us see the roads with the notes so we can supposedly go safer through the woods on Friday and Saturday. Mostly we'll go faster. But it's overdue. Jemba notes are OK, but tweeking them make life so much better.

Justin will be bringing the car over to St. Louis on Wednesday when we will have a Subaru Dealer promotional day at Webster Groves Subaru on Big Bend in Webster Groves, MO. Justin doesn't have a single mile of gravel thrashing in this car and the 100 Acre Wood is ALL gravel. So we're desperately trying to find a place to get maybe an hour on gravel...just so Justin can get into his head what this car will do when he pitches it sideways at 70 miles per hour. We may be doing that as late as Friday morning as it appears now. There's a closed area on a Bison Ranch in Potosi that we can rent. We'll have to see.

Anyway, the weather is scheduled to be warm with moisture in the air, so dust should not be a problem.

Justin and I are on a quest to improve everything. His understanding of what the4 car does as an extension of his butt: my staying on top of the notes and getting used to the differences between him and Matthew (last year's driver); and the crystal clear communication between teammates that just makes this stuff click. We're aware this will not occur overnight. It took Johnson and I a couple of events...but he was patient and talented enough to make it work, and Justin and I finished third in PGT at Sno*Drift, his first snow rally in AWD, so I have every belief that we will stay within ourselves and improve greatly as the weekend progresses.

We have new competition in PGT, 'tho. Stephan Verdier who we've not seen in a couple of years has re-surfaced with Scott Crouch (Tanner Fousts Co-Driver from last season) in PGT. They will be very tough to beat...Matthew will set the pace, and Pat Moro and Travis Hansen will round out the top five. I expect the entire season to see these five vying for class wins every event.

It's going to be a very exciting PGT race this year.

HEY!!!! Congrats to Jermey Wimpey (oh, yeah, his brother the driver, Josh) at Sandblast this weekend. 7th overall! 1st in M2. And this guy's going for a Ph.D.? When does he study? We're racing him next weekend in Missouri. CONGRATS, JEREMY!

Sno*Drift 2007

2007-01-30T04:26:00.000-08:00

After worrying that there wouldn't be any snow for Sno*Drift, Mother Nature accomodated the rally community nicely. Except that there was never enough cushion in the ditches, it was absolutely perfect weather for this Winter Classic. Single digit temps when we arrived Thursday night, and on-and-off snow all weekend.

This, of course, made tire choice a nightmare.....do we go on Nokian RSI's which will stick (sorta) on ice, or a more open tread which will shed snow. There seemed to be no right choice. Most stages had both conditions, so you picked on tire and tip-toed through the stage when conditions weren't right....or slid off! The RSI's were the "curve of best fit for us and when we could stay in the icy groove worked excellently. Staying out of the soft stuff was the challenge of the weekend.

Justin was cautious and on a steep learning curve. We went out on the shakedown stage and ran the first miles on the car early Friday morning. There's a vast difference between how Matthew (my '06 driver) learns to do things and how Justin (my '07 driver) learns. Matthew is all trial and error....Justin is calculating and making minor adjustments. Matthew is "over-commit and recover", Justin is "drive within the limits and stretch the limits." An awful lot of the rally "Swedish flick" technique wasn't working here....too icy. you might get the car rotated before the turn, but then you'd sale through the turn into the outside bank. So the "slow is fast" method seemed to save a lot of body damage. It also didn't look very spectacular, but no one's going to apologize to the spectators.

Attrition was at a minimum, too. We were running back about 17th on the road and hardly saw anyone off. Borowicz had a big wreck in his "For Sale" open car (there was always a bad feeling when a race car showed up at a track with "for sale" written on it!), and a few slipped off and got back on, but all-in-all it should leave the entry field pretty much in tact for 100 Acre Wood.

Pat Moro was flat kickin' ass from the start in PGT...several top ten stage times. I suspect his setup worked well for the strange conditions, and Mike Rossey was his usual spot on with the notes. An 8-9 minute off relegated them back to fourth. Too bad, it was going to be a great run. Matthew was having the same difficulties we were...slipping off and understeering. his issues were later resolved as his crew discovered more toe-out than needed. He then got in the groove and gave the crowds the bank thumping excitement they were looking for.

The PGT drive of the day goes to the father-son team of Travis and Terry Hanson. Travis spent some time at Team O'Neill and it showed. They were consistenly fast and right at the edge (as evidenced by several small offs) all weekend. Maybe if they find some HID lights they can be even faster after dark!

But I'm here mostly to talk about Justin. He showed up with ZERO miles on this car. ZERO miles in AWD, and just a couple of snow rallies on his VW Golf and Austin Mini. It was like going to driver's school. We made three passes of the three-mile shakedown stage and that was it. Started the rally. It was interesting watching him get used to 3 turns lock-to-lock! This Formula driver is more used to 30 degrees lock-to-lock! So there was a lot of exaggerated steering efforts for awhile. Then a lot of over-correcting. He was actually laughing while sliding around some of the corners. But by Saturday, that was all under control. We actually took the sixth fastest time on one stage.

So. Put a great driver in an average car and give him 100 miles to learn about it and bingo! You've got a third place podium finish. An added plus is the minimal damage compared to our fellow PGT racers!

What did we learn? That we'll have Yokohamas next year. That we're still sorting out car setup and it will be totally different for 100AW. That the VSS signal feeding the Terratrip is random at best and we actually don't need an odometer! That REAL cold PGT cars running on 100+ octane fuel don't start when it's 0 degrees fahrenheit. That the food at the Lewsiton Lodge is still terrific! That Justin will be in the hunt and will be giving PGT regulars fits all year!

GREAT video from Targa Newfoundland

2007-01-05T05:58:00.000-08:00

I've just GOT to do this one of these years.....hey Justin!!!!!! Don't EVER sell the mini!

Read the neat Hemmings article....

or take a ride!

Wilson/Orr complete a great developmental season

2006-12-29T12:04:00.000-08:00

Michael Orr (on the right) at nearly double the age of his driver Matthew Wilson (on the left....and THAT'S an interesting ratio!), the offspring of Stobart M-Sport Ford Rally Team boss Malcolm Wilson have put together a true training year for the youngster. The team was on a mission to improve all season....keeping points and placements as secondary. And improve they did....a great article here on the duo.

It is very important to note that Orr discusses how the duo placed improvement over accomplishment during the season, and how pleased he and team bosses were with their stats.

Ari Vatanen/Fabrizia Pons doing DAKAR. Trust is everything.

2006-12-21T05:58:00.000-08:00

From this article

"For Vatanen, the importance of making fewer mistakes than the opposition is the key to success in the Dakar. With his 20 years of experience, Ari knows that no team or driver will be entirely incident-free over the 16-day, 9,000km event, so it is the degrees of error that will make the difference between first and second. For this reason Dakar is unique in the importance of the co-driver's role.

The rest is Dakar In '07, Italian Fabrizia Pons will take the seat next to Ari and he does not underestimate how vital her role is. "It's essential to have someone next to me who I can trust because otherwise you know that you are only fighting for third or fourth place. Co-driving in Dakar is more important than in any other event. Even a top co-driver will get lost a couple of times in a rally but the difference is will you lose two minutes or 15 minutes."

How indispensible are co-drivers? And let's remember Vatanen is 54 years old! These guys (and gals) are awesome!

VW Prepares for DAKAR. GREAT CO-DRIVER STUFF!

2006-12-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

Co-drivers are great repositories for data. They gather if from all possible sources and acrchive for they never know when it will come in handy! Click in the image below to go to the article......

The "OFF SEASON"

2006-12-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

Wild West is over. I really thank Jamie Thomas for allowing me to ballast the right side of her car for that event which allowed me to accumulate a few more points and gain the fourth overall position as a US Co-Driver. Matthew Johnson and I had sewn up the PGT Championship effectively after Tanner Foust's bad off at Colorado Cog in September.

I want to say that in my opinion (and I haven't had the privilege of co-driving for Travis or Ken or Dedo or Matt), Matthew is the best "driver" in US Rallying today. He gets more out of a Production Subaru than is possible. His finishes and stage times were ALWAYS superior to GrN cars, and the list of top 5 finishes overall this year is unparalleled. He deserves a funded Open ride. I'm honored to have assisted in this year's success.

And while I'm at it...I want to thank our fellow competitors in PGT. I've never raced with such complete gentlemen in all of motorsport. Had Eric Langbein not towed us into Wellsboro in the middle of STPR we never would have finished the tranny swap in time. And had Tanner Foust not given us push starts with our missing first gear at Cog, we never would have gotten off the uphill starts. These two exhibitions of sportsmanship and camraderie alone make the class worth running in. Thank you gentlemen. You make the sport what it is today.

Wild West rally was kind of a bust....rain had washed away most of the permissions to use the stage roads we'd expected. But John Forespring and his intrepid committee put together some fun stuff for us to do and we ended up racing about 28 stage miles...most of them at the old Seattle International Raceway. Fortunately Jamie had been to two driver's schools there and she was flyin'!

So now it's the "Off-Season" which in American Rally is about 8 weeks!

But a lot has transpired and we're only in the second week of the Off-Season!

First, and the press release will go out in the next day or so....Matthew and I are breaking up. Yes, it's true....but it has nothing to do with anything more sinister than he wants to run with Jeremy Wimpey (Eric Langbein's co-driver for the '06 season) and I want to co-drive for Justin Pritchard (in Eric Langbein's old WRX). So that little tidbit will hit the news soon.

How did this come about? I have always told Justin that if he ever got out of that silly open-wheel racing he's been doing for the past ten years and got SERIOUS about rallying that I would want to help him get to the top. Justin has rallied a pick-up truck, a 1966 mini, a non-descript VW Golf and a 1976 Ford Escort...but never anything with all four wheels pulling! The recent Subaru contingency announcement has many US drivers thinking of running in the PGT class for 2007 (click here for more info). Justin's racing experience coupled with his rally stage miles over the past 4 seasons make him an odds-on favorite to challenge this year's PGT Champ, my '06 ride, Matthew Johnson.

So I get to run up at the pointy end of the stick again!!!

Running with Matthew this season (we won 5 out of 6 races....even sat on the overall podium for Ojibwe with Travis Pastrana and Matt Iorio) was the confirmation of my saying that "Old age and wisdom COUPLED with youth and skill is unbeatable."

So this year may break down to the "young guys" vs. "the old guys", 'cuz Justin's pushing 40! And I'm....well....I'm........uh..........wise!