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!

Wellsboro, was not so well.

After a hectic five week rehab of the car (read below about the exploits at Oregon Trail), we all convened on Wellsboro, PA for like the gazillionth running of STPR.

I drove over with Mike Houser of 100AW Map Guy fame, and Justin drove in with his Dad and Paul Devco. Eric Fraser and Rob Jozwiak came down from Windsor ON (eh?) to help out on crew.

We had secured the "Farmhouse" at Ski Sawmill about 18 miles south of Wellsboro as the PGT compound. Us, Matthew Johnson, Pat Moro and Travis Hanson all had crews staying there and it was an absolute brain trust of PGTers...most importantly Subaru WRX PGTers. I think at one point we had 28 people sleeping around the house. (There are 34 beds, so it's not like people were sleeping on the kitchen drainboard or anything).


Justin was suffering from some plague and sounded awful, felt awful, but soldiered on. The car seemed to run OK and drove down the road straight, and after Oregon, that's about all we could hope for.

Friday opened up to paperwork...registration, scrutineering (Justin's fog allowed him to leave the log book and insurance papers at home....that should have told him something). I brought a new Peltor Amp (the old one shot craps again at Oregon), so we would at least be able to talk to each other. We went out to run the shakedown stage.

We agreed to run through at 7/10 and just start to regain the "rhythm" of the car on gravel. We were doing exactly that (slow and smooth) when right before the end of the 3.4 mile practice stage the engine just quit. No warning, no sputtering....just stopped. Since the Finish was on an uphill, there was no getting the car to the end. Hansons came by and towed us around and back into the service....where it was nmow beginning to pour rain.

Par Moro had suffered a split "Y-Pipe" in the turbo intercooler system earlier and replaced it only to have the new one split. Lo and behold that's what happened to us. Callnig every Subaru dealer within 100 miles from within Pat's box truck yielded NO Y-Pipes. Back to the Farmhouse.

Before the night was over, Moro and Pritchard had fashioned repaired Y-pipes using threaded iron pipe, radiator hose and clamps....lots of clamps...no kiddin'. Reminded me of McGiver!

I'll send you over to Justin's Blog for the gory details....but suffice it to say...we were slow, tentative, getting better and then the gremlin hit...or maybe it was just a sleeping gremlin from Oregon. Seems the right front control arm broke...and it probably started in Oregon, but it became evident on Stage 6 where Justin was spinning the wheel wildly to get the wheels to turn. We felt insecure enough about this situation (imagine the steering falling apart at 90 in a tight left-hander).

So if we scrape together enough rubles we'll take a shot at Maine. We saved a lot of money staying at the Farmhouse, and we DIDN'T significantly break the car, so we'll see. This car is frustrating...but then and Ex-Verdier, Ex-Langbein car simply coulnd't be expected to be of showroom quality. And now WE'VE put our stamp (literally) of approval on her!

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!