Check out biggreens rally build if you don't know the backstory.
I'm here at the Olympus rally, came into rally town (ocean shores) late thursday after the 400 mile from the absolute other side of Washington, Pullman. My friend Charlie is codriving the rally and he pulls in right behind us. He's only had to come from Seattle. It's midnight and we have to be up at 630 for recce reg. Zzzzzzz.
We get registered and hit the road to sample the stages and go over the notes at 730, the recce book says allow 9 hours to do recce. We don't believe it. We should have. It's easy to get lost and misread the routebook( we have only had the thing for 1 hour at this point, they should have the novice meeting BEFORE they give us 200 pages of WTF)
We are slow noobs. We are making first timer mistakes. Forgeting to zero the odo at each new control. Stoping for food. Going to walmart to pick up a shovel. (required equipment). Not having a decent odo installed in the first place. The list goes on.
We have to be back at rally HQ for the novice meeting at 7, we also had to get back to have the car tech'd. In
Our hurry we ended our recce day like this:
One stage driven backwards.
One stage not driven at all.
One stage not zero'd, every note was wrong.
One stage made us shit our pants(Brooklyn).
More later need zzzzzzz.
Day one started tight. We had a list of things we needed to do to the car in the morning before parc expose' and it took up to the last minute. We were the last car to arrive at like 7:59 it was ridiculous. So now we are in, whew. Parc Expose' ran from 8-9 and then since we started low in the order out of almost 60 cars we waited another hour until we were to check out of Parc expose' which is the start of the rally.
I had the hood popped while it sat and got lots of "wtf that engine doesn't belong in there" comments. lol lots of people were stoked on it though.
The first transit took us all the way down to South Bend, something like 70 mins. As we got closer to the ATC 1, or start of the actual gravel stage my co-driver Charlie is saying man we are going to be late. Wtf we went to speed limit and followed the route book exactly but yeah we are gonna be late. Now we are freaking a bit because we are pulling up to the line and we aren't prepared. Helmets not on, not strapped down, etc. and the clock is ticking. So we sit in the time control and scramble to attach and secure ourselves and our shit. 30 seconds. Pulling helmet straps tight, 15 seconds, Charlie grabs the pace notes find the first page, 5 seconds. NO seconds. BAM hammer down smack the rev limiter once and dump it. This thing takes off like a rocket even on gravel. Full lock on the center diff and LSD's front and rear has a way of putting all the power down.
A few corners in something is wrong. We forgot to connect the intercoms I have in the helmets. Charlie shouts the notes for the entire stage. You don't know loud until you have slid sideways at 60 across gravel in a stripped out car.
About halfway through we see a car off already, a sentra. That has to suck. $600 dollar entry fee for 3 minutes of fun. This stage is pretty tight and twisty, a bit damp, and even muddy in one spot right before a really tight downhill corner, an r2. But we make it to the end and HELL YES I just finished my first rally stage! It only took 1000's of hours, lots of dollars, TWO girlfriends, cuts, burns, late nights and my sanity a few times to complete this project.
From there we head back to service. And we need it too because the underbody protection for the gas tank has come loose and is dragging on the ground. I had it bound to the rear lateral links with the huge style zip ties, the centimeter wide ones, but all five broke. So we zip tied them up again for the second running of the stage but they all broke AGAIN. On the way into the service park with everybody looking over to see wtf that horrible scraping sound was a nice guy told me to find bungie cords and use them in place of the zips. Just tie the ends in knots so they don't pull through the holes. That trick held all weekend. Thanks random dude.
Time for the first stage was 6:53.3. Second time through was 6:07.6 The fastest overall was 5:07
Then we headed from service to the next stage Smith Creek. It was pretty tame, got through just fine. It was pretty fast with a really tight mid section that I liked a lot. From there we headed to the most notable stage of the rally, Brooklyn E & W. This stage is fast. but with pretty good visibility so it was easier to commit to the corners. One thing I wasn't prepared for was the massive amounts of people. Once we popped out of the forest into the clear cut on top of the stage the hill sides were just littered with spectators. Don't get into rally if you can't handle a few thousand people watching your every move behind the wheel... Later in the stage is a spectator area that has a DEATH DROP on the outside of the corner then its a downhill blast to the finish. I use my left foot to brake and get the car to rotate when I'm in the corners so when I got the to finish control and Charlie gave the workers the time car the brakes were smoking some. I can only image how much smoke is pouring off the 25 cars that came in with faster time than I did.
This is somewhere on Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is a turn around stage so everybody just gets back in line to run it in reverse. But for whatever reason this whole process takes 40 mins. So we park and relax for a bit. Chat and pick the brains of the older wiser drivers and co-drivers, check over the car and get ready to do the most intense thing I have ever done again.
Apparently I'm consistent because I cross the line 26th overall(including national drivers) again on the reverse running. After that we head back to Smith creek and that is where we hear there was an accident and just to head back to service because the stage is cancelled. At service we learn the accident was fatal. RIP Matt Marker. This makes me rethink why the hell I'm doing this. I also think, well, if I die doing this I will die doing something incredibly awesome and that I have already fallen in love with. I feel better. We end the Ray Damitio Stages Regional Rally 13th of 34 overall.
Day two starts bad. We assumed that Sundays parc expose' would start at 8 just like Saturday. Nope. We we roll out of the hotel lobby and see the parking lot completely void of any activity at all. FUCK. we are an hour late. The organizers punch our noob card and let us start without penalty. Whew.
After stressing on that we get some good news. We were originally seeded 47th on day 1 but were reseeded way up the order to 22nd on day 2. This makes me feel so good, before the race and during the build I would question my self, will I be fast? I mean after spending all this time building the car and all the money spent too, I don't want to get out there and be obliterated by everybody. Good thing that wasn't the case.
Wreck creek is the first stage of the day, and my favorite of the rally. It's ROUGH pot holes you could curl up and nap in, complete with a sweet jump. I was mellow going through the first time because it was so rough but the suspension I put on the car was soaking it all up so well it gave me alot of confidence to push harder on the next running. So that is what I did. I posted a top ten time on the second running! SAILED off the jump floated over the potholes, braked way later for the L4 at the end of the long straight, kept it floored on the steep uphill, and went banzai on the downhill leading to the finish. My favorite stage of the rally by far.
So we headed back to service once more and headed out to the final 2 stages of the rally. Taholah E & W.
This stage nearly got us. Twice. It's long, 11 miles. It's fast as hell and has tricky corners. I think 6 cars went off on this stage. I was lucky enough to get back on... both times. Stage actually was feeling great until we got to the super long straight with lots of crests and details to be aware of. In fact just looking at the notes again there was a entire page out of 8 pages dedicated to this long straight. Needless to say I got lost in the barrage of notes and came into the corner at the end too hot and got sucked into the gravel berm on the outside of the corner. Back wheels kinda in the ditch front wheels still on the road. We stalled but I fired it back up and blasted off. Rest of the stage I was very slow and mellow because the car felt off, I thought I might have got a flat or bent something. But we got to the end and I asked the control worker if there was one he said no but the front pass looked low. ok. We go up the road, turn around and get in line for the reverse running.
After that slide, we are shaken. There is gravel packed into the bead of the tires on that side and I must have burped some air from the front right. I ripped the mudflap zipties on that side too. I'm glad the gravel berm was so deep because it slowed us way down, likely keeping us out of the ditch. We decide we need a better strategy for the long straights because we both got lost in the notes on it. So we talk to some of the other codrivers and ask what they do. Most say "experience". But other have things like find a roadside landmark to use as a braking point. Or mark the mileage of each crest and tick them off as you go over, marking the last crest as "braking crest" to give your self extra time. Cool. I don't yet have the fancy rally odometer so we label the last crests before the corners breaking crests.
Then as we are standing at the car writing these changes in a group of competitors are coming up the road, one points at me, says "hey, pop that hood" "me?" "yes you, we are all wondering who the noob with the nice sounding car is moving up the order so quick." "ok!"
Some of the guys are subaru drivers so they think the flat 6 swap and 6 speed is pretty cool, and they are amazed that I was the builder of the car, swap, wiring, cage, everything. I even mounted the tires my self with a harbor freight manual tire post. Nearly 2 years of work.(there was a 8 month span where I didn't touch the car after lumbar disk surgery, so about 1 year 4 months of actual work work) It felt really good to have these guys come BS, tell us we are doing very well for noobs, and welcome us into the rally group.
Next thing we know we are on the line and about to get on with the final stage of the rally. Back up the road we just came down. Feeling good, we made the changes, and we just have to get across the finish and the race is over. Cool. 30 seconds, 15, 10 5 4 3 2 1 GO. Brap Brap brap. Car still feels slightly off but nothing bad is going on. Until we hit that long straight. Seriously? again? halfway down the thing we are lost again. ok crest #1. check. #2 check, ok staying left over this one. check, r6 over this one. check. shit was that the small crest? umm. ok which crest is this? shit. ok slowing down were lost. is this the braking crest? I'm lost. YES THIS IS THE BRAKING CREST. SORRY!!! Too late!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXKLzw0Ilgc <- watch.
Things get out of hand fast at 90 on gravel. Lesson learned.
Going into the ditch had my 16 months of sacrifice going down the drain. I don't want to retire 4 miles from the end of the stage. I spent too much damn money on this race. I'm not staying in this ditch. You can hear me floor it at the end of the video because I was bent on getting out. Too bad the guys camera ran out of juice right then. Because there is another 30 yards of crazy fucking Subaru ditch bogging, torn off bumpers, mudflaps, and shouts of victory(not that he could hear us in the car anyway) to be witnessed. When he found us after the race to say he got it on film I was ecstatic. He was sorry his camera died, cause it missed the best action he saw (and heard)all day. People really love the sound of the six.
But we got out. We finished. And I am a happy Legacy owner.
The rest of the stage was taken at sunday drive speed. We lost the front bumper and the car was pulling right worse now, we had taken on a flat.
Yep it's flat.
At this point we were NOT worried about time, so hey grab the camera and get some of this!
A snap from subiegal Jaime Thomas
A vid from somewhere on Tahola E. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr11IGYbGhk
Here we are, relieved, at the 10 mins final service after that stage right before we drive back to the town and attend the awards banquet. I'm on the right.
Us after day one. Car is looking much better here.
The office.
Loaded up for the 7 hour drive home. Thanks for keeping us safe you badass family sport sedan! I'll get your face fixed soon I promise!
Tahola claimed 4 cars on that running. ACP was one of them too, I think his turbo blew or something. (I beat him on my good stage by 0.1 seconds
) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZc3uu6e79Y <- Notice the red finish boards. So close.
This crew was very lucky. A husband and wife team. That was her side of the car, and she already wants to start a new build. Can you say KEEPER?
So, all in all, a RAD weekend.
