OTPR'07

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!