Sno*Drift 2011 Day 3: SS8 to SS18

We were feeling really good about our results from yesterday, but we were also concerned that with the significantly faster stages today, our power disadvantage would really manifest itself. We definitely weren't able to keep up the blistering pace that we had yesterday.

Even as co-driver, and knowing what corners were coming up, I was just deathly afraid that I'd mis-count the crests and not tell Sean to slow for tight corners when we were going 80-90 mph down long rolling straightaways. Luckily, that didn't happen even though it just meant that we were a little more cautious than we actually needed to be.

Sean had his own problems, as he woke up feeling a bit nauseous and this lasted through most of the day. He couldn't eat or drink without feeling worse, but of course not eating and drinking also made him feel pretty bad.

After establishing that Sean wasn't as comfortable going super fast, we merely went pretty fast. So we weren't way up in the standings like we were yesterday, but we still did ok.

The first service was not terribly eventful, and we ended up just putting on some chemical toe warmers while the crew looked the car over a little. Then we all went over to the Super Special Stage in the Buttles gravel pit. This was a lot like a rallycross, so it was somewhat familiar territory. It was pretty rough though at least right at the beginning, and it may have led to this:

We did pretty well in the Super Special Stage, but after that, things got a little bit sketchier. At the very end of SS14: Camp 8, we were headed downhill toward a very tight right hander, but we didn't slow nearly enough and ended up slamming into a snowbank sideways at 60+ mph. That was terrifying and we both thought we were going to roll the car. Also, we were only about 100 yards from the finish. Luckily, we only debeaded one tire, so we promptly got to work fixing that. Additionally, we happened to be in a huge spectator area with a commentator who said something like "the co-driver can run down the road and get a time," so I did. Running in the snow sucks, and then when I got to the control, they told me that that wasn't actually a rule. Luckily, as I was headed back, I noticed that Sean had gotten the car back together and was coming to pick me up. We ended up losing about 10 minutes on that stage.

The next stage, the 15 mile long Camp 30 was nearly as scary. Again, down a hill into a hard and icy right hander without slowing enough, and we smacked a snowbank with the left side of the car again. This snowbank must have been a bit harder, because now the car didn't drive quite right and made terrible noises when the left rear suspension was compressed. We finished out this crazy long stage and had a look, and we noticed that the wheel suddenly had around 8 degrees of positive camber. We didn't have much choice but to finish the next stage before going to service, so that's what we did.

We texted the crew to look for a new rear beam and rear axles. By the time we got back to service, they had obtained some extra parts from Matt Bushore and we were all ready to fix the car. All of the crew was involved as well as people who weren't even part of our crew like Matt and a couple of spectators who we happened to know. We went way over time on our service, but got the beam, stub axles and brake rotors replaced within an hour, just in time to be able to continue the rally. Like I said before, our crew is amazing.

We finished out the last two stages with some cautious driving just so we could actually finish the rally. Results for the day weren't nearly as good as yesterday's, but we were excited just to finish. I think we did pretty well for our first rally, and just a couple of mistakes in the second half cost us an obscene amount of time. At least we're going home with 2nd place in G2 for the Sno Regional Rally. Next event hopefully will be the New England Forest Rally in July. We'll be making a lot of changes before that event, so watch the blog for details!