Monday, August 11, 2008

Galway Wrap-up

GCFR is over for another year. I'm really happy with our performance: in his first rally in a four-wheel drive car, Matt Barnes drove us to a fourth place overall finish.

Things were great on stage: Matt drove a quick and clean rally. The notes we had made worked well and it didn't take long for our in-car communication to "click".

Off-stage, though, there were some hiccups. At the turnaround at the end of the first stage, when we went to start the car... nothing. The engine wouldn't turn over. A quick check showed 8 V at the battery, so a group of volunteers from other teams and some of the folks at the quarry (thank you, BTW), tried to push start us to no avail. Finally, Bryn Epp from MLRC brought his truck over, and someone grabbed a set of booster cables from somewhere, and we got the car re-fired. The whole episode lasted a few very tense minutes. After that, we kept the car running, just in case.

The weather was damp without being completely soggy, and it seems like this made the stage road quite a bit quicker than previous years; the old stage record time was broken by several cars.

Several photographers have already posted photos from the event. We're in car 8, a black and red Eagle Talon:

Evan Holt
Andrew Harvey
Tom Hayston
Robert Roaldi

Great rally, great road. Thanks to the organizers and all the volunteers.

Jeff

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Long time no blog... but time for Galway!

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted to my blog, and a big part of that has been a rather unlucky season so far. I guess I find it hard to write "we DNF'd. The end."-type posts.

Sandblast went well - we finished first in our class and fourth overall, but the season went downhill from there.

Rally New York

Our run at Rally New York ended on the first day in the ditch: we came around a sweeping left-hand corner and were confronted by a car stopped on stage on the inside of the corner near the exit, half on the shoulder and half on the roadway. We went wide to avoid them and touched the left wheels on the edge of the early April Catskills slush on the side of the road. This sent the car spinning. Ivor tried his best to catch it, but we slid across the road and hit a rock wall and a telephone pole guy wire, doing a fair bit of damage to the front end of the car.

Back at the shop, the mechanics got to work assessing and fixing the damage... but it was bad enough that we missed the next event, Rally Tennessee. By not scoring points at two rounds of the championship, this effectively put us out of the running for the USRC.

Black Bear Rally

This past June, Black Bear promised to be an interesting rally. I signed on to co-drive for Robin Fleguel in his former AV Sport WRX STi.

The rally started well. In the first few stages, we were setting safe but decent times and steadily improving with each stage... then stage 4 happened.

A few kilometers from the end, we hit a small bump just before a left six, a fast, very slight curve. This upset the car a bit and pushed us to the outside of the corner, landing us on a slick patch of mud. The mud didn't provide even enough grip for the slight curve of the road, and we slid off the road, slipped a few feet down an embankment, and came to rest against a few trees.

That was our rally.

MLRC Testing Day

At the end of July, I went to my first MLRC testing day, co-driving for Francisco Peirera in his Evo VIII. He rallied for quite a while until the late 90s, when he switched into dirt track modified racing. Francisco is quick.

I made a rookie mistake: I figured that the way the testing day was set up (short stage, with breaks in between runs), I wouldn't need a motion sickness patch... well, on our third run through the testing stage, my body voiced its disagreement. I started to feel sick about halfway through, but held myself together until the end of the stage.

Once we pulled to a stop, I found out just how quick I can get out of a rally car. :) I didn't just climb out, I actually leapt from my seat through the door and into the ditch.

Later on, the bad luck continued: Francisco took his crew chief (a co-driver in his own right) out for a couple of tuning runs, and on the last run as it went over a crest, the transmission locked like it had shifted into two gears at once. This caused the wheels to lock up... and without any way to control the car, it slid into the bushes.

Coming up - Galway

They say bad luck comes in threes, and if that's really the case, then I've got mine out of the way for a while. Coming up next is the Galway Cavendish Forest Rally on August 9. I'll be co-driving for 2007 OPRC Production 2 champion Matt Barnes; for this rally, he's leaving his Toyota Paseo in the garage and will be competing in the Planet Motorsport Eagle Talon. It's looking to be a good rally.

Jeff