psoper

Lots of people have related their horror stories of the weather the outrageous towing debacle and other aspects from the spectator perspective, and I have to say I really have to give props to anyone who put up with all of that in support of our sport.
Now for a competitors perspective- the major accomplishment for me that I did not get sick at all, the last couple of timesI've co-driven Rim, I was barfing profusely by the start of stage 3, but between heavy medication, an open face helmet and a nicely sorted out car, I managed to maintain my constitution through the night.
The first stage is almost all tarmac, so Neil was able to put in a pretty decent run, even though our odo was giving us silly numbers, so my calls were all but useless, he did a good job of reading the road ahead and held a decent pace. Stage 2 started with broken pavement, but fairly quickly turned to this real nasty oatmeal consistancy mud, which was extraordinarily sloppy and slippery, and what's more we found ourselves without a speedo or tach- as it turns out the driving lights were drawing the battery down almost to the point of putting us out- until I suggested Neil turn off the lights and see how we could do on the stock illumination (that instantly fixed most but not all the problems) then the transit to stage 3 was also just hellacious trial in itself, so we were grateful to finish that and head in for service.

psoper

Our service was pretty simple, disconnect all but one pair of the driving lights, clean the windows, re-fuel, and knock the big chunks of mud out of the front wheels.
With that all done a couple minutes before we were due out, we got back in the car and got ready for more action.

When we got to the end of the transit to stage 4, there was a search and recue truck along with an ambulance with their bubblegum lights going, we pulled into line and I had to get out of the car and run up to the control in the rain to check in on our minute, but we were told there was a delay.

After about 20 minutes or so a worker came by and asked if we were running just the club or National event, and since we were club only, they told us our night was done and we could turn around and head back for the night.

So we did.

psoper

...started with a total biblical deluge in the morning, but the clouds broke and while the wind continued, it almost seemed like it might get nice for a while-
Despuite the brutal rain, there were a good 30 or so subarus that lined up for the "showdown" some really sweet rides won well deserved trophies, but since they weren't giving any prizes for most miles on a US WRX- my 76000 mile old wagon didn't win anything, but there were a couple of other Alcan Rally veterens there as well

psoper

... for an hour on Saturday as the organizers were running into problems with course opening cars getting stuck and miserable stuff like that, when we did get word, we were told that the roads used for 4 of that days stages were unpassable, we'd be running the first 3 stages before service and then see what else could be salvaged.

Neils car looked nice in the grass there at parc expose

psoper

But the afternoon made the night before look like a walk in the park, the mud on Del Sur Ridge was making it difficult for 2WD cars to even get to the starting line, much less race out on the road, when we got to the turn-around point a lot of competitors were worried that they might not be able to make it going back, and after it took a couple more hours to get us all turned around and started, those worries quickly proved to be well founded.
Our return trip was slower then the run out by some 6 minutes- we were hampered by at least 4 2WD cars stuck in the mud, two of which were next to each other completely blocking passage. Mud was flying everywhere, coming in the roof vents and mucking up the routebook. We ran the washer fluid reservoir dry and had to stop on transit to dump our drinking water in.
BUT- we did manage to run the in-car DV camera on that stage so we should have some pretty interesting stuff to watch when that all gets dumped down.

psoper

We finished 38th overall in Friday nights results, we would have been a bit faster but for the lighting and electical issues holding us back a bit.
And we managed to pull off a 30th overall position on Saturday.

While no stage records were broken, hurt or even threatened by the platypus rally team on its debut outing, we did what we set out to do- which was run an open class WRX with a seed 8 driver and finish without breaking or being in last place.

So it was a huge success!!!

My trip home was also a great run- I went out to the coast via CA58 which if you haven't driven that section from McKittrick to Santa Margerita- must be put on your "must drive" roads list, and caught Highwy 1 with almost no traffic on it at all- ot took just over 4 hours from San Simeon to Berkeley

Speed Element

iTrader: (39)

Congrats to the pair of you on completing what ended up being some what of a mud bath!

Mike

www.mpjperformance.com
www.gb-motorsports.com

r_master

hehe, gratz on finishing the rally, mpj grouppy (me, mike, tommy, kirk) will be cheering you all the way next year as well ^^;;