STPR 2021 Continued (the actual racing part)
Race day started with service setup and a bit of waiting since our crew had been dispatched to help get Downey a return trailer setup after some towing issues on the way to the event. So it was a bit of hanging around with the rally pups:
Then off to the center square in Wellsboro for Parc Expose- it's always nice when the town hosting the rally seems like they actually want it there, and Wellsboro may be one of the better examples of that. We hung around, talked a bit of trash, tried to not think too hard about the jump and upcoming stages, and generally meandered until the start:
Then off to SS1, WM In- at the start control, James/Orlove were stuck because the passenger window wouldn't close- a really unfortunate start, especially since we were in the same class and looking forward to a good battle. It was rough in there as expected, but we put in a respectable 4th place 2wd time and were fastest in L2wd. Unbeknownst to us, Downey cracked his oil pan in here and ran a full 40sec faster than us anyway.
SS2 was Rattler, which was super fast with only a chicane in the middle and a single R3 near the end to slow the cars down a bit- we yet again ran 4th 2wd and fastest L2wd in here, although I overrevved it a bit on the final R3 and hopefully didn't hurt anything too much.
SS3, WM In again- pushed here a bit, even with lots of banging coming from the front- it turned out to be the front skidplate bolts, which had fully ripped the centers out of the weld nuts and disappeared somewhere in the muck and rocks. A little faster than last time although Josh put down a flyer for the 2nd fastest 2wd time (the leading 2wd overall was a fancy R2 Fiesta which we had almost no reasonable hope of catching).
In service, we checked things over, impact gunned some absolutely massive threadforming bolts into the front of the skidplate mount (note, find more sizes of these they were awesome), and developed a ratchet strap plan in case they didn't. I threw the strap in the spare tire well and we were ready to head off again. We also took more fuel than I had originally intended, since the WM stage actually burns a full 1/8th tank on this car despite only being about 8 miles.
SS4 was WM Out, and I really thought I slowed down enough for the big jump in this direction, dropping from 5th to 4th on approach and then gassing it off the launch, but clearly we still have a little suspension work to do because the thing still drops out of the sky like a lawn dart:
Whatever it was still awesome, the skidplate held on, and the bumper was repairable with zipties. We were slower relative to the rest of the field here, I'll chalk it up to being shaken after the hard landing. Still leading L2wd and second in 2wd overall at this point, which we held for the rest of the event although our times were mostly midpack once we realized we had a bit of a lead and didn't want to tear the car to pieces chasing that R2 for the overall 2wd position.
The second running of Rattler as SS5 went really well, zero complaints other than that the rear tires were pretty shreadded and the car was somewhat loose. We nailed the chicane and the final tighter corner, it felt great.
SS6, WM Out yet again and AGAIN I thought I slowed enough for the jump but came crashing out of the sky in distinctly uncool fashion. At this point we added a "don't be a hero" note before the jump and planned to brake way harder and drop to third gear.
Yet another service, lots of zipties but little else other than some fuel and a lightbar install. With two stages to go and attrition setting in (half the 2wd field was out at this point) the name of the game was steady pace, don't hurt the car. So that's what we did, losing time throughout but keeping things relatively safe, although we lost a rear mudflap, a front turn signal trim piece, and nearly the rear bumper just thanks to the rough road:
There was a big delay before the very last stage and as a result it was really, really dark. Running a stage like Waste Management at night is really something special- the fast sections have dust you can't see through, the slow sections are full of trees, and a lot of it is about memory and trusting the notes. It felt great just to make it with a semi-respectable time.
Others were not so lucky- head over to Josh's thread to see how this glorious slammed stance was achieved:
Then we sat in impound for a while as scores were tallied, sharing stories and in general just relieved to be done destroying our cars. Result? Well, we won the coveted "Big Nuts" trophy for fastest RWD car:
And L2wd on a podium made of dirt:
Overall position was 12th, which I'd call respectable for the car's third rally. The New England region/DC/us house had a whole lot of podium finishers in it so we snagged a group photo:
And our crew, including Dan Shirley who is prepping a car right now. We may have to sabotage it so he keeps crewing for us instead:
Tow home uneventful. I'm happy.
