I'll post a small write up as well.
2 weeks prior to the rally the car wasn't running due to rust in the gas tank. I had the car at Peter Reilly's and Sang's after this to get the tank re-installed after sandblasting + re-lining, a new pump, etc. I knew the suspension was stiff, but Peter pointed out a few other things to me as well that I didn't know. The short of it is that jumping was strictly forbidden, and I'd lose time over the triple jumps and the big jump by just backing off. Oh well, it's GCFR so I just needed to keep it clean.
Recce went well, and after fashioning an exhaust hangar out of zip ties and mechanic's wire (1 went missing, whoops) we were set. I was able to get Jeff Hagan to co-drive for me, and it was awesome having an experienced co-driver in the seat next to me on a first rally.
I knew that, short of the Lada, I probably have the least HP in the entire field. So between a car I barely knew, a crazy suspension and a stock 1.8L 8V I wasn't expecting much.
Stage 1 was mostly good. The car is light, and it rotates when I ask it to. Coming from the WRX I was crazed by the lack of power but being able to pitch the car into a turn and correct it easily with FWD is rewarding. Most of the stage goes okay with one or two slides, except for the left turn into the quarry road. I came in a bit hot and slid wide, my fault. I recovered, but I lost track of the wheel position. After recovery I thought we were going to go straight, but when the wheels hooked up again we made a beeline for the inner ditch. Uh oh. After banging in the ditch we continued on, with no apparent damage. I actually banged the crap out of the skidplate on something, but we survived and had a semi-decent time for a first run. However, there was a certain someone at that corner who observed the whole thing...
Stage 1. All of these videos are basically useless since the GoPro was untested and I had it too far back. The brightness is set to the interior instead of the outside road, so you can barely see anything. Drat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-vPmrzxfmYSo, now I'm feeling mostly good and looking to keep it clean and get faster. At the start of stage 2, someone tells me a friendly fatherly message from Ross Wood. "You want to slow down if you want to finish". Ugh, of course the one corner I mess up has to be that one. Let me be clear that my comments after that "That's great, that's awesome" does not mean it was great or awesome at all. It's no disrespect to Ross, it was me just lamenting that one corner and the fact I couldn't keep track of the wheel properly. Regardless, I got my head back in it and started SS2. Most of the stage went pretty well, I was finding it easier to keep Jeff's instructions in my head and things went smoothly. However, at 6:26 in the video I turned the wipers on by mistake. This has always been a problem with me, even at the rallycrosses. I think I keep my hand open a bit when I'm moving the wheel fast. For a split moment, I let myself get distracted and tried to turn them off. I clipped something on the inside and we started making a beeline for the ditch. Not good, not good at all. I lifted and spun the wheel to the left to try and get going in the proper direction, and luckily the car rotated. I then floored the gas and prayed for the best. The right side of the car went into the ditch for a moment and then came back out. THAT was the worst and last moment we had on the rally. I turned the wipers on by mistake a few more times but ignored it until a straight from then on. I'm going to remove the stalk and relocate the controls somewhere else, I never want to have a moment like that again due to something stupid like wipers.
Stage 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB7BdY-h6EwStage 3 and 4 went without a hitch, finding more and more speed with control. At service, Jeff went in to check the board while I checked around the car. Afterwards, he came back out and asked if I wanted to know how I was doing. By now I knew Peter K and Mark was out, so I had a suspicion from his tone that we were close to someone else. I said no, because I didn't want to get the crazy back. We were actually battling with the Focus of Andrew Krulikowski and Gary Sutherland, 10 seconds behind them. It's a good thing I didn't know because I would have been pissed after stage 5.
On Stage 5, things were going great and we were on a flier of a stage. The confidence was there to keep it planted during the 6s and 5 pluses. About 2 kms or so from the end of the stage I noticed we were getting a lot more dust than normal and that we were catching someone. About 1.5 kms from the end of the stage we caught Vincent Landreville and Chuck Storry who were missing a wheel. They managed to do the stage in 7:00 regardless. Wow. But they were still holding us up big time, and I couldn't pass them because I couldn't see ANYTHING in some sections. I was driving slowly and using the weeds + notes to figure out where to drive.
Stage 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_shGal7kAAt the turnaround, Jeff felt it was okay to tell me now how close we were previously to the Focus, since it was probably gone now. Indeed, we lost 14 seconds to the Focus on that stage. I decided to push a little bit more on SS6 and see what happened.
Stage 6 went completely fine, no issues at all. And it was a fast one for us, we did it in 5:50. Not bad for an 84 Scirocco with a stock engine
I was just thrilled to finish with a decent result.
Stage 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I3oiXqvHbgBack at service, I was packing up when Jeff told me that we were 2nd in G2, something happened to Andrew and Greg on SS6 and they were 32 seconds slower than us. Probably a spin. Icing on the cake, and a great weekend all around.
For Tall Pines, I'm looking forward to having a suspension I can trust and experience under my belt. It's going to be a long time until November
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