Thursday, August 9, 2007

FINALLY!!!

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!

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