Car repair after the Plan B rally was pretty minimal, so we were ready to rock the Desert Storm Rally in Blythe, CA the third week in March.
We headed out with a crew of three this time, myself, Jack Penly codriving, and Jarod Hindman pit crewing. The unpredictable March weather was in our favor and we made the drive in decent time arriving at the hotel in Blythe at 4 am pm Thursday morning, just in time for a nap in the truck. RECCE was to start that morning so we headed out to the community college where the race would start and end and got situated. Attended a nice RECCE class put on by the organizers, and then took off in the F-350 to drive the roads. RECCE (reconnaissance) is an opportunity for rally teams to drive the roads they will be racing on and either write or amend "notes" describing the course. Sometimes notes can be purchased by the race organizers, other times it is up to the team to write all of their own notes. We used organizer notes for this event. Once on stage and driving the course we found them to be excessively detailed with a lot of unnecessary information so there was a lot of scratching out and rewriting.
We also learned that RECCE is best done in a car not a big truck. Preferably a car similar to what you will be racing in. The bounce of a hard truck suspension, and the different view of the road really affects the way you see your surroundings, and how the navigator is able to work in the vehicle (Jack was bouncing all over the place in the truck trying to alter our notes).
By the end of the day we had trashed the sway bar bushings in the truck, and exhausted ourselves after no sleep and going all day. The RECCE group we were with also decided not to drive one of the night stages (driving it in one direction, but not going back and driving it another) as we were really pressed for time. It can take quite a while to drive a whole rally at slower RECCE speeds compared with race speeds. It is typical for rally organizers to set up a course where a road is first driven in one direction, then the teams turn around and drive it back the other way creating two different stages. Though you can get an idea of the road driving it in the opposite direction, at race speeds it creates completely different situations and so requires different notes for each stage. This came to play for us on that stage as the "gotchas" in rally often determine the outcome of the race. "Gotchas" come up when the road you are driving has a sudden turn, or camber change that when driven at race speed do not allow the driver to correct when committed to the course. This can lead to a crash - called an "off" in rallyspeak.
Our first rally started with us nervous but excited. We left the Main Time Control, at the college and took a "transit stage" out to the first "special stage". Transit stages are on open city roads and take the race from one place to another. There are heavy penalties for speeding on these for obvious reasons, and arriving too early at your next checkpoint can easily end your rally due to the penalties added. The "special stages" are the full speed race stages driven on closed roads, typically on dirt.
On the first special stage we were having a blast, but were surprised to see a car off on the side of the road just a few miles in. It was a beautifully prepared VW Golf Mark 2 who had blown his engine, and you have mixed feelings as you see your competition off the road, but you want race them just the same. "That's rally" as they say. It is certainly an endurance event and sometimes finishing is how you win.
Our first few stages saw several of our two-wheel drive competition off the course, mainly due to sliding over the berms and into the rough desert. Here's a link to some in-car footage of the early stages.
On the second stage we noted the car to be running hot, and it seemed to be caused by the cooling fan which wasn't coming on. At one of the turn around stages another competitor noted a bent prong on our cooling fan and that fixed the problem. In grassroots rally most competitors will help eachother which makes it a lot more fun than some levels of competitive motor sports.
The daytime events went generally smoothly for us. We drove at moderate speeds, were happy with our amended notes, and didn't encounter any other problems. In the early evening we did a two lap stage at the Lucus Oil Speedway - an oval track tarmac course. It was a little unsettling hitting the corners with our knobby rally tires looking at that huge cement wall would easily destroy the car but it was one of our favorite memories of the race.
That night we had two hard stages over extremely rough roads. The south western desert of California has very rocky riverbeds and the race roads would drop down into these beds laden with 6-12 inch diameter river rocks where the road would become unrecognizable then rise quickly back out the other side of the wash and continue on. These beat the snot out of the car. We wouldn't have been able to complete the stages without our huge aluminium skid plate that functioned like a rudder and sled at the same time.
Surprisingly to us, we ripped out the first night stage - (Stage 10) despite having a problem with our notes (Jack got a little lost), see our results here:
Then, just before the return stage, I went to start the car and got nothing. No power, no fuel pump, an obvious electrical problem. We called Brian Moody, back at Salta Motorsports and asked for help. Checked our kill switch - that was on, and the fuse breaker. We finally took the protective battery cover of the battery box and found the positive lead had completely bounced off the terminal. We were back in action!
I had a ton of confidence on Stage 11 after seeing how we did on the previous stage. The problem was, this was the stage we didn't RECCE the previous day. We were moving faster than we had all event and my confidence was high, then coming over a crest, there was a sudden turn to the right, and as I had the car unweighted due to the crest, was unable to make the turn. See "GOTCHA!" above. Off we went, onto a huge pile of rocks , over the burn, and high centered on some jagged unforgiving ground. We were dead in the water. Cars behind us passed us by, and we waited for Heavy Sweep to come get us out. Lots of pushing, and gunning the motor just made a mess and didn't move the car. Fortunately for us, Heavy Sweep leashed us up and brought us back to the road. We were able to finish the stage but lost a ton of time. It was shocking to us, how quickly we went from being highly confident, to nearly out of the event.
We had torn a brake line connector, destroyed a CV boot, and bent our rear beam despite the significant fortification done by Steve, at Salta. Jarod worked his tail off that night to get us to a Parc Expose event. This is an event where the cars are displayed for the fans and is required or the team gets penalized. Laughingly we were one of the first cars there, despite our mishap and time taken in repairs.
The final day only had two stages. We were nearly in last place for two wheel drive after our "off" and were feeling kind of unsure about what lay ahead. It was a 25 mile long desert stage. The transit alone just to get to the start was 1.5 hours. We knew this stage also had several "gotchas" and we didn't want to get burned this time. The good news, we had really good notes for the next two stages, the bad news, they had several very long straights and our car is really better suited for the tight and twisty roads where power isn't so important.
We started the 25 mile long stage steady, and having a blast with the road which was much smoother than some of the others we had been on. It was actually suited to a car, instead of the trucks which seem to be very popular down in the southwest - now I know why they rally with trucks down there, sometimes it seemed crazy being in a car - a rock crawler would have been more appropriate! None-the-less, we tried to drive smooth, and fast, but didn't take many chances. This paid off for us, and two cars ahead crashed as did the car behind us.
Here's in-car video of Chuck in his Toyota Fx on the long stage, and his crash into the desert:
Unbelievably, we had moved up to first place in Group 2. The next stage was beautiful, and super fun with lots of rises and drops, and some very open high speed straights. We slowed down to insure we held our position. The last stage was an event called a "super special"; a very short stage around a tight track set up for spectator viewing.
Overall, this was a hugely successful event for us. Won our two wheel drive class. Learned a ton about rally and finished our first event. The bad news really came when we got home and found out the motor would no longer start - and had no compression, and we had to repair a lot of damage to the car from the "off" and the brutal roads.
Never-the-less, we set our selves up to be very competitive in the South West Rally Series and will look forward to the next race at Rally Colorado.
Roger
