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So here's the adventure from the silly seat side of things:
LSPR 2012 was a great time. We all got off to a rough start to the weekend between my crew having to go back to Marquette on Thursday after almost getting to L'Anse on Thursday (3 hour loss of time) and Ian's crew finding out the car had serious part throttle issues, getting a really late start, forgetting the trailer spare 20 minutes out, and other stuff Wednesday night/ Thursday morning.
Thursday it rained all day. I think I heard 2+" of rain was accumulated over a 24 hour period. The weather forecast called for a mostly dry weekend so we were all really hoping it would let up in time for the stages to dry out. Anyway, Thursday is the day everyone gets checked-in and registered. Camp Ian arrived in Houghton around 1pm and got everyone registered at Rally HQ. I know they went to FY Racing to get some much-needed fresh gravel tires installed. I got into town around 3pm and got my camp checked-in to our hotel and went to Rally HQ to get myself registered. From there I went to meet up with the crew where they were staying to get my notes before we all went to Tech to get the car and gear inspected. The car was still being pretty fussy at this point, but otherwise all is well. The rally odometer which had been "fixed" was "broken" again, so we didn't really bother with calibration.
The shakedown stage was at the airport in Hancock. I totally forgot where this was and got us turned around and off track right away. Better now than later. We made it eventually and Ian made two trips around and the course. It was a sloppy, soupy mess. After that we all went our separate ways for the evening.
I had a nice dinner with my wife, sister-in-law, and niece since it would be the last time they see me for any quality time until the weekend is over. From there I buried myself in the notes for about 4 hours preparing them for the weekend. I had to make sure all the pages for both the Route Book and the Stage Notes were accounted for and organized everything to make switching between the two seamless while in the car. I also highlighted anything that may be worth emphasizing while we were on stage.
Friday I slept in a little bit, had a mediocre hotel breakfast and got myself ready for Parc Expose. I was browsing through the rules and looking at how many coefficients I had(fancy way of saying "skill points") when I decided I should probably go attend the novice meeting. After all, this was only my third rally. I was late, but didn't really miss anything. Come to find out, I didn't need to attend anyway, so I pretty much wasted 2 hours of that morning. Oh well - I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
Since the night before, the crew (Broc, Cale, and John) was trying to get the car as ready as possible for the weekend. They ended up finding a fuel leak which helped increase the car's economy tremendously. The car still had some part throttle issues, but it would have to do. When Ian pulled into Parc, John was at the laptop trying to get some last-minute tuning done. It started sleeting/snowing at Parc Expose just before the drivers meeting. After that, we pretty much jumped in the car and started the race.
Stage 1 and 2 were held at the Moyle Gravel pit again. It's kind of a sad attempt at a super special stage, but it's just too spread out and flat to put a ton of spectators someplace where they could see a lot of action. This was the first time Ian was racing since he offed and wrecked at Ojibwe, so he was a bit reserved. At the very end of the stage was a jump that was NOT in the notes. We hit it pretty good and when we came down, the front camber dissapeared. The "transit" back to service (and boy are we glad there was a service immediately after stage 1) was very wet with huge water holes. Blue smoke was rolling out of both front fenders. Remember those new tires that were just installed - the two in the front were pretty much junk now. The inner sidewalls were rubbing on the coilovers so much that there was a thumb-size groove carved into them.
The crew frantically pulled the wheels and made adjustments. There may have been some shady repairs made at this point in time, but I tried not paying a whole lot of attention as I was more focused on reminding them how little time we had left. Everything came together with time to spare and we made our way to Stage 2 while the crew began the journey to Covington Service.
Stage 2 came and went without incident. Fortunately the repairs made to the front suspension held up; but with a long transit ahead of us, we were definitely taking it easy this time around and made sure not to crush the jump at the end of the stage.
At Covington, the crew made some adjustments to the rear suspension ride height and gave fuel to the stewards to take to Kenton. Since there was going to be over 100 miles of stage and transit between service, they set up a fuel depot in Kenton that we would use after stages 4 & 7.
I forgot to mention that we started the rally in the 8th position (or so). This worked to our advantage as we were far enough back in the pack that the roads were getting pretty well swept of the loose stuff, but far enough ahead that we weren't seeing tore up roads until the second passing. We ran every stage twice, so we did eventually get the tore up roads, but again, not as bad as the guys in the back of the pack. Our fantastic starting position was all thanks to Ian getting second place in the Open Light class back at Sno*Drift at the beginning of the season. The speed factor he earned from that race put us way ahead of our competition. It's a nice little loophole that we are more than happy to take advantage of.
Anyways, most of the stages after our first service in Covington run together for me. I just remember there being a few hairy moments throughout the night. Ian cleaned out the edge of a ditch with the rear of the car at one point. There was an off camber jump that we hit hard and I was definitely sitting much higher than Ian before we came back to earth. We were completely off the road at one point in time with all four tires in a ditch at speed for a good 50 feet or so before Ian pulled us out of it. There was also a railroad crossing just after a sharp right that we almost hit the rails. Coming into the corner, the car just wouldn't turn on the loose surface and we were far outside. Ian pulled it back on just before the crossing.
We also had a close call when we got to our second or third service. The bolts that hold the housing and guts of the alternator together had started backing themselves out. I think we lost one of them all together. they tightened them up and didn't really give it much thought the rest of the rally.
More later...