Post by English on 02/10/11 at 22:39:29
This is the write up by my driver for Perce Neige:
After years and years of wanting to do proper rally events, and over a year after deciding to finally convert my Evo to North American "Open" class specs, I finally completed my first event in the car. The event is called Rallye Perce-Neige; an incredibly difficult event run in ice and snow on logging roads in northern Quebec and the first stop in the Canadian Rally Championships' national competition. I accomplished my overall goals of a) completing the entire event and b) not being the slowest car on the road. Not bad considering that the event is considered one of the hardest races in North America, and was only about the 4th or 5th time I had ever even driven on snow/ice in my entire life. :-) More importantly, I'm officially bitten by the rally bug and plan to run as much of the rest of the National Championship as I can this year.
The event started almost a week ago with a long tow up to Clear Water Designs -- the race shop of the crew who built my car -- which is up in Picton, Ontario. These guys have built a number of Mitsubishis, including multiple CRC, Rally America, and X Games winners. The shop is owned by Ian and Michelle, a husband and wife who race an Evo VI and Evo IV respectively. An incredible amount of work goes into prepping a car for a rally event like Perce-Neige, and so I hung out at the shop owner's house for a couple of days while they set-up the cars. On went a light pod with a bank of 4 Hella HIDs for the night stages, "soft" rally springs for the slippery conditions (still ~200/lb spring rates incidentally) with a raised ride height, and finally the mounting of 6 Yokohama A034 ice/snow tires (with tubes for added protection) on 15x6" wheels.
Snow packed into the grill after our first test of the car.
We started the event at 6am Friday morning in Maniwaki, Quebec with recce. This event is a National-level event, so requires the creation of full pace notes. At regional events they provide route books that give you pictures showing the severity/angle of corners, key landmarks or cautions, and the distances between them. At national events, however, you have to pre-run the stages at road legal speeds and create your own notes for during the stage. The style of notes is exactly what you hear on WRC coverage; marking direction of the corner (left or right), speed (1-6), features (over crest, bridge), hazards, and distance to the next instruction. So you write things like "over crest into 3 right minus long 50" to describe a blind crest leading into a 90-degree left hand corner where the road narrows, with 50 meters to go until the next corner.
Our recce car.
We ran each of the 7 event stages twice (two-pass recce), with the first pass to write the notes and the second pass to refine them. This would also mirror the event, as we would run each of the stages twice for 14 total. Recce puts too much wear and tear on the cars before the event, so we ran the roads in my co-driver's Golf. I knew the event was going to be tough when we got stuck 2-3 times just trying to drive down the roads at normal speeds. :-( The roads we ran on were insane -- imagine the most narrow, rutted, broken, dirt switchback you have ever driven through a forest. Now cover it in a sheet of ice and line it with snow banks on each side. Now prepare to run it as fast as humanly possible. Sheesh.
I was warned by all of my Canadian rally friends that this event eats cars, and to focus on just finishing the event, get as much seat time as possible, and not try to be a hero. This was the first time I drove the Evo in anger since the rebuild, and would be only my 2nd time in a rally car ever (previous was in a FWD Focus at a desert event), so this was wise advice. After seeing the roads, my co-driver and I agreed to keep our pace down and do everything in our power to run the entire event and see the finish.
On that first day we were out on the roads without any significant break for almost 14 hours. Once we were back at service, we then had to get the car through technical scrutineering and do any final prep. I learned that day that sleep deprivation, road snacks as lunch, and lots and lots of driving are another feature of rally events. :-)
Three bad-ass Mitsus: Evo IX, Evo VI, Evo IV.
The rally started on Saturday morning with first car out of Parc Expose at 9:30am, and each car leaving 1 minute later. As car 30, we got to sit for a bit. From there, the marathon of stages began. The first two stages were short, relatively quick runs though 2km and 6km town roads. Just to prove how tough the roads were, they ate 3 cars.
The sensation in the Evo was unlike anything else I have ever done. The roads were incredibly icy (making my tire choice seem questionable) and even accelerating in a straight line made the car hard to keep on the road. I managed to finish both of the first stages easily, with times in the bottom 20% of the group. Not terrible, but we clearly had work to do. We had a short service immediately after to check the cars, and all of the competitors who started on the Yokohamas were switching to specially prepared "tractionized" ice racing tires. The big voids in the Yok's were great for snow but gave no grip on the ice. I unfortunately did not have any ice tires, so would have to just deal. :-(
We made two more runs through the town stages before a long trek out to the logging roads we would run the rest of the day. The fifth stage of the day would be the first run of the 33km Kitigan Zibi. It's the longest of the event. It also has a reputation as being treacherous and a complete car breaker. We launched into it and started making pretty reasonable time. I got much better at pitching the car into the corner at entry and stringing multiple corners together in a single drift. I also had multiple moments where I thought I was going to be spit off into the trees, but hung on. Unfortunately, my luck eventually ran out. I came over a blind crest into a downhill, 90-degree right and was met with a sheet of glare ice instead of the ice/snow we were on for the rest of the stage. I simply could not get the car to turn, and slid off into a snow bank at speed. I was good and stuck. We tried digging the car out, but we had no chance. Thankfully, another car came up behind us -- they had had an earlier off, so stopped long enough for us to hook up our tow strap and get yanked out. More than 10 minutes lost, but away we went to keep going.
Unfortunately we lost more time on the 8th stage as well. By the time we were driving the roads, the cars ahead of us were leaving unpredictable conditions. Every blind crest was a surprise, and I managed to stuff the car into a snow bank for the 2nd time of the day. This time we were stuck in a ditch with the car at a 45-degree angle and no rally car was getting us out. Thankfully the sweep truck that comes through after the rallycars was able to pull us out, and being in the back of the field meant that we had time to make it to the next stage and not be out of the rally. We completed stage 9 without any drama, but by then the rally had lost another 5 cars (including our team's Evo IV, which ended the day 12 feet down in a ditch but driver/co-driver okay).
At our first major service.
At the next service (now past 3 in the afternoon), we put on our rally lights and tried to get the car back in reasonable shape with a quick realignment, securing damaged bumpers, and re-hanging our exhaust which was now almost touching the ground. A quick refuel for both car and driver/co-driver and we were back on the road.
By this point I had adapted to the lack of grip from my tires. I used a combination of ditch-hooking (putting the inside wheel deep into the corner where the road falls off) and dragging my front bumper through the inside snow banks to get the car to rotate and stay on the roads. My technique was also getting better, and I was starting to pick up the pace safely. We were deep in the second running of Kitigan Zibi when the car finally took it's first real damage. A dip/rut we had marked in the notes had collapsed and deepened from all of the cars running in front. I braked to slow for the rut (which I could now barely see due to the sun setting), but it wasn't enough. The car bottomed so hard that we blew out the shocks and damaged the LF strut hat. The car suddenly started crabbing and became even harder to drive, but we managed to keep going.
Halfway through our run, however, the stage again came to an abrupt end, although thankfully not due to our issue. Two of the cars on the road in front of us managed to get stuck side-by-side on a steep, icy hill, with a third car stuck at the bottom of the hill. The road was completely unpassable. At this point, the stage became a comedy of errors. We tried to pull one of the stuck cars out of the ditch they dumped themselves in, but managed to rip off their rear bumper instead! We got the other car freed, but the road remained unpassable until the sweep trucks came through and could drag the stuck cars free. Due to this, we missed two of the last four stages. We were able to stay in the event, however, as the missed stages weren't our fault, so we would get to run the last two stages of the rally.
Closing out the event would be a run out on the 29km Tortue Nord, a quick turnaround, and then a run back the same road (Tortue Sud). This stage is a wide, fast, flowing road with better conditions for snow tires. Despite the broken suspension we bombed the road at maximum speed. With the rally lights flooding the snow banks and surrounding trees, the chatter of my co-driver in the intercoms, and finally carrying some real speed through the stage, everything finally started to click. I was down ~20% in average speed from the front runners on Tortue Nord, but given how sick the car was and how little experience I had going in, this may as well have been a win for me. I was ecstatic as we huddled around bonfires to keep warm while waiting for the organizers to get the stage switched for the run back.
Bonfire at the Tortue trunaround point.
Our finish was as dramatic as the rest of the event. A third of the way through the last stage we had total brake failure on one of the front corners (a brake line was severed by debris). The pedal got softer and softer until it was down to the floor. Thankfully the rally brakes keep the front and rear brake circuits separate, so the hydraulic handbrake still worked on the rears. We limped it to the stage end, and then limped it the 60 minute drive back to the time control. At 12:30pm our event finally came to an end, but we were officially finishers. We ended the day dead last of those who completed, but 23rd of the 42 starters. With everything we went through, I was proud to have made it to the end with the car running under it's own power.
Thanks to Ian Crerar and the guys at Clear Water Design for providing such an awesome car, James Drake for navigating me safely through my first event in the Evo, the Rallye Perce-Neige organizers for putting together such a killer event, and Mitsubishi Motors Canada for providing contingency money for those of us who make the long trek out to Canadian rally events from the US.
Can't wait for next year. :-)
-peter*g