Ramada Express Pro Rally December '00

A short afternoon of testing on the Sunday preceding the race is really where the story has to begin. For those who did not hear this part, it adds some excitement to the story. By the end of testing, I was ready for some jumps. Unfortunately Holister does not have any jumps, but they do have waterbars; Same thing right? Nope, not these anyway. They are too small and too steep. This caused the car to nose dive which crushed the front crossmember. This is of course no problem because, after all, I have almost 60 hours (still need a complete exhaust as well) before I have to leave for the race. Working until 3am the night before leaving, and again until 5pm the day I am leaving, the car was ready to go.

11 driving hours later...

Finally arrived in Laughlin, registered and had the car inspected. Nothing To change and nothing to fix. Felling pretty good getting ready for the event. A short drivers meeting and I am in bed by 10pm

Day one: Up at 8am and outside to hurry up and wait. A short little press thing, and we are off to the races. Two hours of towing later, the race is now really ready to start. Stage one: (plan is to take it easy and get a feel for the car and get used to this rally thing). ...3..2..1..GO and we are off. About 5 miles in we start to see the person who started one minute in front of us. Wow, "we were taking it easy right?" I ask my co-driver, "everything is fine" he responds. After a lot of horn blowing we make a clean pass and continue on. Entering the last turn we noticed a small problem, the car does not turn very well in the snow. Oops, not the best time to find this out. Never fear, we made it through and crossed the finish. Not too bad, just a little scare, so ready for stage2. That passes rather uneventful until we again realize that turning issue, or lack thereof. This time we dont have a choice, off the course and around the tree that we were destined to hit. Just a minor scratch on the front fender. Not too bad for going around a tree we were supposed to turn in front of. By now my co-driver is a little white, but can only mutter "way to keep it going".

Stage 2 is now over and we head to a short 30 minute service. Steve, my co-driver jumps out, still a little white, and goes over to look st our posted times. Wow, a 5.03 on stage one, that places us 12th overall and 1st in our class. Stage 2 time is also up and we are about 13th overall and still first in class. I was a little worried I was driving stupid fast and the day would soon be over, but Steve confirmed our pace was smooth and we should continue on. Because of our times, we were moved from 42 on the road to 20th which is great, except that our service is now only about 15 minutes.

Stage three goes by and it is much much better. Because of the road position, the roads are not as torn up and the mud is not as deep. I am very happy with the new start order. Stage 4 was not quite as smooth as we slid around a corner and caught the back of the car on a tree. No worries though, never stalled the car, just kept on going. Back to service again, and we are back in 12th overall, 1st in class, but 2nd is just a few seconds behind us. Now remember I am just at this rally to try to finish and get this new car broken in. Yeh, try reminding me of that right after I notice second place a few seconds back!!!!

Stage 5. Again, we move up in start order to about 15 because of our times. The road however, is one that we already raced on so it is now just more torn up than when we ran it earlier in the day. I was rather worried about the last two stages because they have both been run on before, and because I am personally afraid that adrenaline will take over and consequently put me out of the race (ie wallop a tree!). Stage 5 is done and there is just one more until the day is over. Stage 5 went very well and we improved our overall position to 10th (but I dont know that yet) I am now feeling pretty good about my new car as there have been about 12 people who hit trees or rolled the car.

With survival in mind we begin stage 6 in the dark. To my surprise, we have a very smooth stage UNTIL that darn tree jumped out into the middle of the turn. Oh well, we didnt need those extra lights on the hood, or that fancy light pod that I spent 40 hours to complete. Back on the course, we cross the finish and get ready to head back to the hotel. About two hours later we arrive to find that our times (despite hitting a tree) have placed us 10th overall and first in class, BUT a minor road penalty incurred by the navigator dropped us to second. We were about 45 seconds from first and nothing was really damaged by that tree, except the lights. Some minor repairs and we are in bed by an early 1am.

Day 2: Up at a brisk 6am, we begin our trek to the racing area about 2 hours away (for those that dont know, the headquarters of a rally is usually some distance from the actual racing area and it is required that you stay at the hotel).

Stage 7, we drive down it from the top and turn around ready to start the race back up. A little sliding in the car to get a feel for it in the dry weather (completely different from the previous day). The car feels perfect, it slides out in turns, but only as much as I want. Cant be right, lets try this again. Yup, same thing. Okay, stage 7 is flying by and I dont remember feeling that good in a car ever. Then, it wont turn left, then we enter a straight and it wants to turn right. Hmmm, lets try another turn, yup, flat tire. That cost us about 6 minutes to change and we are now about 7 minutes behind 1st place. That really isnt a problem since I am just there to test out the car anyway. yeh right..

Stage 8. 17 miles of wide open roads, I see Steve look over at the speedometer after I shift to 5th gear so I get a little curious and look myself. Oops, over a hundred. Better hold that steering wheel tight. It felt like a freeway except the car tended to slide in the turns a little more. Through the finish, that felt really good. We see someone we know so we ask about our times. Looks like we ran about a minute faster than our competition.

Starting stage 9. Only 9 miles long, but still rather open. Very uneventful. Through the finish. Not so sure about our time, but we saw our competition off to the side of the road so we are probably ahead of them now.

Stage 10, 18 miles and the last one before a service stop. Deciding to take it a little easy since the other car may not have finished the last stage, we take the start. It really is hard to take it easy!!! As we start up a hill, I downshift to 4th gear to really get the car pulling. At the top is a spectator waiving us on over the crest. I ask Steve how confident he is about that guys instructions. He responds that it is just a spectator and they either want to see a big jump or a big crash. Never wanting to disappoint, we crest the hill at about 90mph. That feeling of flying is immediately present, followed by lack of visible connection with the road or lining trees. What seemed like 5 minutes later, we touch down softly on the mostly flat road. What a feeling. I asked Steve if we could go back and do it again, but he said it would hurt our time too much so we continued on. Once at service, we decide nothing is really needed on the car so we go to eat and compare times. Our competition got running and finished, but not until we had already grabbed the lead from them. Our times were not only fast, we were the fastest 2wd car on all stages except the one we got a flat on, and we have now moved up to a respectable 7th overall! Just one stage to go, a 5 minute lead over second, sounds like a nice easy stage just to ensure we finish this race. Lets start the car early to let it warm back up after service......ok, lets jumpstart the car so we can now determine why it wouldn’t start on it's own. Ok, the alt is not charging, all wires are correct and the feed is also good. Never fear, I have a replacement and we have 30 minutes left to change it. With 2 minutes to spare, we start the car to find that the new alt is also not charging. We decide to start the stage anyway and hope for the best. That hope ran out about 17 miles into the stage and we were left sitting there watching all the other cars having fun and passing. The best thing I could think of to say is that at least we didnt wreck the car. Although I was not aiming for a win when we arrived, it was rather disappointing to watch it slip away for such a reason.

Day 3: Day 3 was just some "superstages" which simply means a short closed course, dirt parking lot race to put on a show for the spectators. It also adds some bragging rights. 4 laps, one at a time to see who gets the best time. The total time gets added to your final score, but unless you are within seconds of each other, nothing is going to change. After two runs, we are leading our class and just a few seconds behind the other, faster 2wd class times. Two more tries. The next lap we run a 1:36, 4 seconds faster than the next 2wd car, GREAT RUN. Last lap, another 1:36. Not only did we run the fastest 2wd time, we did it twice!

All in all, we may not have won the big money, but I have nothing but smiles about how the car performed. There is almost nothing that I want to change (except alternators) with the car. I am already counting the days until Oregon in April!

Hope you enjoyed my short story

Happy Holidays,

Chris