Wild West Recap
Although we had a bit of bad luck, the Wild West International Rally was a good event for us. We placed 2nd in Production Class on the Sou’Wester Divisional Rally and 3rd in the Pacific Rally Groups Driver Class 3. Over the course of the weekend we set 4 P class stage wins and set the fastest Nawhatzel time for a
naturally aspirated, 2 wheel drive car, even though we only got one attempt at it and are in an extremely limiting class. We improved dramatically and now have the confidence to get class wins.
Read on for more details!
On preparing for the Wild West International Rally in Shelton, WA September 10th and 11th, we decided to keep things simple: check the alignment, timing and get some new tires. This is a stark contrast to the normal thrash that we do getting prepared for a rally, which often involves replacing suspension components, body panels and re-engineering things that didn’t work out all that well at the last rally. Its nice to finally have a car that is more-or-less “finished”.
Because we didn’t have a lot of stuff to fix after the last rally, I wanted to take advantage and spend some time driving the car on gravel, re-familiarizing myself. Traditionally our first stage is always our worst because it takes Dad and I at least one stage to warm up and get comfortable to what we’re doing.
Unfortunately during this shakedown/practice before the rally, I proceeded to grenade the passenger-side half-shaft which cut the session short. Easy enough fix. After fixing it I noticed some CV noise, figured it was just the new axle breaking in. Later I realized that it was coming from the other side and that axle would also need to be replaced. We picked one up from the Shucks in Marysville on the way down to Shelton because there were none in stock in Bellingham.
We arrived at Rally Headquarters at the Little Creek Casino Friday afternoon, registered and got the car inspected. Piloti Shoes was sponsoring the rally and was giving the first 30 competitors a pair of shoes each for the driver and co-driver. For some reason they didn’t have our shoes so we went away empty-handed… Hopefully we’ll get them sometime soon.
After we got settled, we started replacing the driver’s side half-shaft in the Casino parking structure. Both the inner and outer CV joints were toast, and I’m sure we would not have been able to finish the rally on them. Normally replacing the axle is a straightforward procedure; the task was complicated considerably by a 1/4” aluminum skidplate attached to the underside of the car, making it extremely difficult to get the leverage required to remove the busted axle. We were under a deadline to get the car to Parc Expose (essentially a mini car-show for the rally cars) and had to abandon the task.
Luckily our elite service crew in the form of Crescent Kao and Chad Terwisscha showed up shortly thereafter and vowed to repair the part in question the next morning before the rally began. The part was replaced with some cursing aimed at the direction of said skidplate.
This was our first rally using Stage Notes, which is a highly-detailed description of the roads generated by computer that are available at significant additional cost. In for a penny in for a pound: if we’re going to invest the time and money to run the event we might as well go all out. Normally we use a route book which basically outlines only the most critical of instructions. We hoped that the extra information would enable us to quicken our pace.
We budgeted a fair amount of time before the start of the first stage for Dad to read aloud the new Stage Notes and for me to listen and visualize. This is a vitally critical step that we’ve never utilized in previous rallies. By practicing our communication for 15 minutes before the rally we were already up to speed when the rally started.
Because of the vast difference between the route book and the stage notes, it is generally accepted that the team will struggle for the first couple of stages as they get accustomed to the new format. And we were no exception–we had a hard time reconciling what was in the Stage Notes with what was on the road and got lost a number of times. Despite our struggles we managed to exhaust the entire 2 minute dust window to the car in front of us (which happened to be my old rally car, the 510) and set the second fastest stage time in our class with a time of 14:29, just 9 seconds off the first place finisher. If we could figure out the stage notes we’d knew that we’d be in good shape.
Dad asked Kathryn Hansen for some advice on the problem we’re encountering with the notes, and were prepared to take a new approach to Special Stage 2. I was fully expecting for us to continue struggling with the notes for at least another stage or two, but was pleasantly surprised that Dad had perfected the process after only one stage and was dead-on for SS2. We again exhausted the 2 minute gap between us and the car ahead of us, which we found was having some hydraulic problems with the clutch, which forced us to fight dust for a mile or two. Despite low visibility due to dust, we set a time of 9:54, 18 seconds quicker then the next quickest Production class car and took the class lead.
Because of our pace we were bumped up in the running order past the struggling 510, which was great because it meant that hopefully we wouldn’t have to contend with the whiteout conditions caused by the dust.
We did well for the rest of the rally, trading times with Car #297 piloted by Steve and Kelly Greer. Going into the last stage it was essentially a dead heat for first in class. I was enthusiastic because it was getting dark, and I tend to do really well on nighttime stages. We were at a bit of a disadvantage because we had not expected to be competing at night and had not finished building our nighttime light pod for the car. I knew from previous nighttime experience that although the lights definitely help, but even without them we should be exceptionally quick.
Sure enough at about 8-9 miles into the stage we began to catch the dust of the car ahead of us, which meant we had made up most of the 2 minutes window to the car ahead.
Another mile or two down the road we came cooking into a Left 3 (a fairly acute left-hand corner), saw a bumper cover in the middle of the road and then a car nosed into a massive stump on the side of the road. Because we had been catching their dust, it must have just happened, which was further evident by the fact that only one safety warning triangle was up only a short distance from the car (ideally there should be 2 or 3 and at least one is to be placed so that it is visible before the corner where the car is off).
Competitors are also required to display either a large OK sign or a Red Cross symbol if stopped on the side of the road for whatever reason. Unfortunately the team did not have a sign ready and were not prepared for when we came upon them at full rally speed. This is not altogether an uncommon sight–sometimes it is just not possible to get the sign ready in time for an oncoming car, and in such cases the stranded competitors typically give an enthusiastic thumbs-up or a “GO GO GO” gestures if everything is okay. When we came upon them the driver was still in the car, the co-driver was standing outside the car, crouching into it. When he saw our lights, the co-driver popped out and began waiving his stage notes and hands in a criss-cross fashion across his face: an international sign of distress.
We are required to stop and render assistance if it is required. We stopped as immediately as possible, a hundred yards down the road. Dad immediately unbuckled, got out of the car and started running back to render assistance. I unbuckled my belts and was getting out of the car when I heard the stranded team yell “We’re Okay!” They had meant to gesture to keep going but in the excitement had accidently used an unambiguous hand signal that meant to stop. I don’t recall exact reaction when I realized what had just transpired but I’m pretty sure that if I repeated it on television I’d be getting a call from the FCC.
I sat back down in the car, re-buckling my helmet and fastened my belts so that we could finish the last mile of the stage. Dad ran back to the car, and started buckling in. As soon as he was buckled in, we started rolling–without the reconnecting intercom and without the stage notes as we had lost what page and instruction we were on. We finished the stage, but the damage was done, we had lost at least a minute to the fiasco.
We filed an official inquiry as soon as we got back to rally headquarters, protesting what had happened to us. The stewards agreed with us and corrected our time to the next fastest car that finished after us. Unfortunately they were only 14 seconds quicker then our actual stage time even including the stop, getting out of the car, completing the last mile with no intercom or stage notes. The 14 seconds were not enough to make up the difference–we ended up loosing the Production Class win by 25 seconds. We finished 2nd in P class, 3rd in our Driver class (based on experience), and 13th overall out of 29.
It ended up hurting us in more ways than one–we lost the Saturday Sou’Wester Production class win by 25 seconds, but it also meant that we’d carry a 25 second deficit into the second day of the Wild West International Rally.
We put it all behind us for the Simpson Stages (Day 2). We again started with the mental preparation by spending 10 minutes on a dry run of the notes. We started off the first stage with a P class win, taking 7 seconds out of the deficit and gave 8 seconds back on SS2. We knew that everything hinged on the Nawhatzel stages (SS3 and SS5) which is a monster 25.51 mile long stage, one of the longest in the US, where the top cars hit speeds well over 100 mph over bumpy gravel roads.
We drove a nearly flawless stage on Nawhatzel a reaching speeds of over 90 mph, setting very quick time of 30:15, 35 seconds quicker the next fastest P class car and retaking the rally lead.
Throughout the day we had realized that we did not bring enough tires to the event, and the ones that we did bring were soft–more suited for rain, which had been predicted, than the sharp rocky roads that we encountered. We had tried our best to manage the tires that we had by rotating them carefully, but it was made even more difficult when we noticed a sidewall defect on one of our best tires and were forced to discard it. We basically were running the tires ragged and would have to take it easy for the rest of the rally. Now that we had the lead all we needed to do was maintain it. Easier said than done.
On the next stage were were doing well but the well-worn tires were not as effective and we drifted wide on a left hander, and got stuck. Our rally was essentially over–we had to wait about 20 minutes for the sweep truck to pull us out. Even at a reduced pace it was difficult to keep the car stable, and we ended up spinning and getting stuck again. We finished the rest of the stage at a crawl. To add insult to injury, the alternator light came on in the car at the midpoint of the stage, which meant we were running on battery power.
After the stage we stopped to investigate the alternator problem and discovered that some debris had gotten into the pulley and had snapped the belt. We did not think that we could finish the next 25+ mile stage on battery power so decided to replace the belt from a spare that we had.
Was more difficult then we thought, ended up taking about 20 frustrating minutes. When we showed up at the next stage we were told that we had been time-barred (kicked out of the rally for being too slow), and would not be allowed to complete the rally.
In retrospect we realized we probably could have finished the rally on battery power, and even if we hadn’t we would have at least had additional time to fix the alternator belt and probably would have escaped being time-barred.
That being said I still felt like we had a great weekend. We had 4 P class stage wins and set the fastest Nawhatzel time for a naturally aspirated, 2 wheel drive car, even though we only got one attempt at it and are in an extremely limiting class. We improved dramatically and now have the confidence we can get class wins.
Our service crew was fantastic and was probably the single biggest contributing factor to our success at Wild West. Throughout the weekend they replaced an axle, an upper control arm, a tie rod end, hub/knuckle/spindle, numerous tires–they kept us running and allowed us to focus on the task at hand. Special thanks to Crescent and Chad for their help.
Next rally for us will be the two-day, 102 mile Pacific Forest Rally, October 14-15 in Merrit, BC.
