Desert Storm Rally!

[AlexR]

Howdy All!

Well the 2010 California Rally Series is about to kick off with the Desert Storm Rally! The racing starts on Saturday at 9:36 AM The results will be updated in real time at : http://www.rallydata.com/Results/DesertStorm_2010_ClubScoreBoard.htm (the site says updates at 8:30 but the first car doesn't hit Stage 1 until 9:36 and its 12 miles with an estimated "hot" time of 14 I'de say you won't see a score show up until 9:50 AM


i'll be headed down Thursday , doing Recce driving Friday :)

There's a few twitter's that will have some update information and a Stage Tracker system that will have real time GPS / speed of the cars, and perhaps some live streaming in car video (one of the things stage tracker is working on) I'll try to post up some of the other info before the event.

[AlexR]

The California Rally Series will be using the twitter hashtag #crsrally (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23crsrally) at all events this season. the CRS press liaison has set up a twitter account you can follow for live updates at each event: @crspress (http://twitter.com/crspress).

http://www.stagetrack.net/

[solonut]

Alex...where?? as in location....there is alot of desert out there;)

[AlexR]

Its in Bylthe, Ca! But I've never been there before.

Going to C&C @ lunch for an alignment cause currently its just eye balled to "close enough" specs! :lol:

[Cody]

Sweet. Hope the new motor and other repairs make it awesome.

[AlexR]

A full write up is in the works (about 1/2 done on my laptop at home) I won my class (stock class) both days :) Saturday i was doing Really well beating all the CRS-Group2 cars and placing 7th over all out of 22 entries, Sunday the stages were Much rougher and i was 3rd from last after 2 stages, but then gained 3 places on stage 4, and 3 more on stage 5 ending up 10th overall

[AlexR]

The Best late note Ever!

Tom, Anthony, Dan and I arrive in Blythe,Ca at about 7:15pm only 15 minutes after early registration and tech have opened up which is new for me. We were all saying its great to do the tech first in case something fails we will have time to fix it up. I do all the registration stuff, except we didn't have a proof of limits for Tom's truck (the reccee vechicle) which we determined he would call his insurance agent later on and hand the phone over. After filling out my Rally-America license form Marni tells me that she will need to get it to Doug to OK me, And i couldn't pay for the storm attack until i had my license, and needing to wait on that we decided to get tech out of the way.


We walk out of the registration room with our packet and are expecting to sail through tech. with our only concern being if we needed to have the stickers on the car Before we can pass tech, or if we just need them on before we start. When i'm almost done doing all of the street legality checks (rally cars must have all blinkers, brake lights , etc working) Well the tech asks me to put it in reverse for the reverse light check and i do, and he tells me again to put it into reverse and i say it is, and he tells me that its not working. :( oh no! how did this happen they were working not too recently, oh well no big deal. and the tech tells me that my fire extinguishers are no good, and i explain that they are NASA legal and i have a log book, and the tech explains to me that its only the Roll Cage that is accepted on the basis of having a roll cage. So i run back to toms truck and dig out the 2 10:BC extinguishers that i bought a few weeks back but never found Time to install. so i ran these back to the tech and he says they look good, and on further inspection by me i see that the pin fell out of one of them and it discharged on the trip down. :(

oh no my tech nightmares seem to be coming true. (nightmare of taking days off of working paying entry fee + hotel + gas and not being able to compete) Tom and anthony tell me they will take care of the issues while i'm on reccee and I'll be good to enter.

I was quite a bit bummed that they were going to miss out on the recee driving as this is the crews big chance to see what i'm going to drive how the road looks, and i like to get input from everyone where i cut , maybe line suggestions, if can flat certian jumps, or crests, will my suspension bottom out on dips and you usually get a few "oh wow, you are going to be driving full speed HERE?" with some crazy cliff on the side, boulders, trees or anything really, basically a chance to talk up how crazy you will be driving.

So with all of that over we stop in a store for some beer and water and hit the hotel up. As usual i find it hard to fall asleep, finally slipping into dream land at about 12:30am, and waking up at about 6AM and then trying in vain to fall back alseep but the excitment of the day to come keeps me from falling back to sleep. After Toms alarm goes off, Dans alarm goes off and i decide to give up and just get ready and dressed. We arrive at the recee meeting and get about the normal schpeal with the addition that We are all handed FRS radios to comunicate with one an other. we all sign up into either group A or group B, Finding it amusing to sign up to "group B i opt for that one. Well this happens to be the right choice as each reccee group is lead by a "captain" and our captain makes the call to not run all of the stages in order and he creates a new transit that has us run stage 7 backwards in order to save about an hour. the recce driving was going great and we were driving from "day 1" to "day 2" and we heard on the radio that one of the teams has to return their rental car , and they need someone to give them a ride during the 2nd day recee or they won't be allowed to use notes on that day. Not wanting an other rally driver to miss out on recee and notes i offer to help out as i had 3 empty seats in Toms truck. We swing by the ford dealership and a bit to my surprise it's John Black, my main in class compeition at this rally. Seems a bit fitting that i'm helping out my class competitor after winning a sportsmanship award last year. he seems a bit surpised to see that its me who will be helping him out with the ride for recee. With a bit of a chuckle to myself we take off to the "flying J' to refill on gas and get lunch, well the line there is about 20 cars back and John knows of a gas station a mile down the road so we hit up that one and I hit him up for gas. $20 every little bit helps! the day 2 stages are a bit rougher with a few sections that really have me concerned, it has goood sized ruts running across the road easily a foot across some of the a foot and half and rather deep. i wasn't sure if i would be able to drive fast enough to fly over them or if i would have to slow down a whole bunch. the very last stage has a pleasent surprise for me. a
very short rocky section, and then the road turns into a WRC quality road!!! wow! Since the 2nd day was being done with out a service I started thinking up a strategy of making sure i don't damage my car on the first 2 stages and hoping i still have a lead going into the smoother stuff. John black drives a ford ranger so i pictured him being able to handle the ruts quite a bit better than my car.

Well we finish up with recee and head back into Blythe for the fire fighters fund rasier dinner. When i show up i see my rally car parked at the Tech tent but i don't see my crew anywhere. I call up my crew and they say they just walked off and they will be back. I ask one of the other teams about tech and they tell me we have to wait, with nothing to do but wait for my crew to walk up i allow myself to fully relax.

which then allows me to take in that we get to help out the local community Since we have 44 competitors and easily double that in crew , all who are buying spageti plates at $6 should be around $720 and I'de like to think a few extra locals showed up to check out the cars :) Tom and Anthony arive and tell me they paid for my storm attack entry and installed my fire extinguishers. he had ran out and bought one at kmart out of the petty cash fund i gave him, along with paying for my entry, handling the insurance information they also went through everything in the car to make sure we are ready to roll. i'm Excited but we need to take care of tech. i see John there and show him the fire extguishers and he points out that i have a plastic mount still, but offers for me to just use a bungie cord to double secure it. and he tells me i've got the Ok to race but i need to find Doug to sign my log book. Just before finding doug an organizer asks me back my car up in the line of cars. as i'm doing this my reverse lights come on !!! =) i ask the organizer to tell John and doug which he does. so now i
don't have to get a "fix reverse lights" put into my log book. Doug signs it simply with "ok to race" Dan and i exchange a few high fives and quickly get into spageti line, I'm starving!! we munch down and then walk around and hang out with the locals a bit.

We are talking to one of the fire fighters / spageti chefs about his "mini sand rail" type contraption which i thought was really cool Well part way into talking to him the fire alarm goes off and all of the fire fighters scramble to get their gear on and run to their fire engines. a few parents are scooping up their kids or calling them over to the dinner tables so everyone stays safe , and the fire fighters can leave quickly. We watch one guy arrive to a full truck and he looks at the next engine which as no one in
it and he gets left behind. We asked him later about that and he said his truck was selected to be left there and he wasn't sure so he got ready anyways. Wow! i knew they got ready fast but actually seeing it for youself is rather amazing. We chat a bit more with the other drivers and shortly after most of the drivers get in their cars and head back to the hotel. We decide to do the same and meet up back in the parking lot stopping to gas up the rally car along the way. paying about 3.08 for 87 octane.

When we get to the hotel parking lot We hang out there for a little while and chat with one of the other teams for a while. but wanting to Try and get some reasonable sleep i head off. again i'm laying my head down, at about 12:30 and Toms' alarm goes at about 6 am waking me up. i try to get back asleep but now i'm very excited that I'm going to get to rally.

[AlexR]

We wake up the next day and prepare to get to the college by 7:30 for the drivers meeting. we see an other team in the hotel free breakfast area and make a few stops along the way.. at about 7:20 we get a phone call from Marni that we are late for the Drivers meeting. a wave of panic comes over me! our navigator frantically digs through all his paper works and lets out an "ooh ****" as he realizes our meeting was at 7:30. they tell us if we can make it to marni before she leaves we can get our time card. I'm not sure if we are going to have a penalty or not. We speed up a bit and roll into the parking lot. i find marni and she tells us everything is okay, i had to talk to Doug briefly to finalize my RA license. we have our Arrival time set and take off. becuase the first stage is so far away from the service area we are allowed to (and encouraged) to trailer out there. we follow a number of other teams and take the exit off the highway and park, my crew quickly unload the car off the trailer. I chat with some familiar faces, Zack from DI, the jackson team (keith and kyle) and aaron walks over from DirtyImpreza.com and i chat about how i lost my last windshield banner. and he wonders off, and comes back quickly with a new one! with the car mostly clean we decide to slap it on really fast before i have to take off. with that out of the way i'm off the finish this first Transit.



We get to the ATC (arival time control) and get our transit time, we know from recee thre's a horrible sand wash that we fear getting stuck in. The course worker tells us not to worry if we get stucxk that there will be a sweep vehicle that will pull us out. and it won't be a penalty becuase the wash is so bad and before any of the stages. we drive up the transit all excited to race and come up to the sand wash "of doom" and no one is stuck in it. ok i think, i think we can make it, i back up a bit and charge in at a bout 45 (well into 2nd gear) i try to keep the rpms up but about halfway through we start digging down and i make a decesion (bad ) to grab first and we spin up and dig in. :( we hope out and look, and suddenly some random guy walks out from the bushes.. i guess he was driving not too far away with a 2wd explorer and wanted to scout it out. then an other rally car zooms up and gets stuck. then another. then the lovesac team in their fierro zooms up and starts drifting around, the navigator hanging out screaming, they get by with out any issues. LOL of course! and then the father and son team taking up the last of the pack comes by in a 142. they get stuck but we all run up and push them through!

Sweep comes up and hooks up to the car that is furthest down (Terry paterson) and they are off, now its my turn, i get in an wait for the sudden jerk, it comes but its not that bad and i stay on the gas keeping us moving. we unhook and almost can't go but Dan gives us a little push and we are off , i stop and he hops in. Wow all that for the first stage, we roll up to the time control and they tell us its been canceled. :( all that and stage 1 is canceled. i sure hope this and getting stuck aren't bad signs to jinx my rally. we come to the end of stage 2 and get our transit time to the next stage.

We finish the transit with out any issues and see a long line of rally cars at stage 2, the start had been delayed but its running as normal. so we hop out and chat with some of the other teams.. as it's time to put back on my helmet and hans the nerves kick in . what if i can't get in sync with this new navigator? What if my off season repairs don't help at all? what if my new alignment is horrible? :| what do i do at the large water splash? we roll up to the stage start and i hear my camera turn off (great must be bad batteries again) 5, 4, 3, 2 1, RALLY and we are off.

i ride first till 6k and grab 2 which seems to shoot up to 6k faster than normal and i grab 3rd. the stage is quite fast and flows well i'm into 4th quite often and goind back down to 3rd for the tighter bits where i find it easy to drift the car for turn entry and just stand on the gas and steer around where needed. i come over a slight crest and i'm staring at about 80 yards of water just as i hear "TURN Right 4 to avoid water" TOO Late! i think as i brake down from 65 to 45 grab 2nd and stand on the gas. we enter the water flooded road with a slight slow down and water splashing everywhere, there are a few holes in my floor that shoot water and mud up upon ups, and it rains down slightly as we never closed the roof vents, 40 yards in and i can't see and i desperately try to turn on the wipers as fast as possible, but at first it just smears the mud so i hold down the sprayer , still standing on the gas. we come out of the water, not having slowed down much but now my motor is sputtering bad!

Oh no! why is this happening to me? we won't even get to finish 1 stage, awe this sucks for my navigator! too bad we didn't avoid that water we should have made better notes in recee! I keep thinking how dumb it's going to be to have killed my car on the first stage we get to run, after about 1200 yards of that the motor goes back to running normally and i tear through 3rd and grab 4th, we have a fast flowing section and i realize that i can get up to about 98 mph but run out of HP to accelorate any faster than that. :( Since i usually don't use my taller tires, i'm a bit worried about my stage times we have a short transit and then 1 more stage. we run that stage attacking very hard! i slow down a lil bit early esp around the crests as i try to get fully in sync with Dan, calling out a few "Nexts, hold" and "repeat" but not much as all as we seem to be clicking, i was surprised how fast he was calling out notes, thinking he must be getting ahead of me, but i'm actually just driving that fast.

We finish the 2nd stage and start the long drive back to the service park (think it was 20+ miles) he pulls up the stage times on his cell phone and we are Killing it, a bit to my surprise, how far ahead are we of J.black? 1:34 after 2! wow, we came into the service park and my crew is very happy, we have a few other teams stop by and tell me i'm doing great. we take off the rear sway bar as i thought my car was too oversteerish and a lil hard to drive. i gain an other 25 seconds on each of the next two stages but we are told two more stages are going to be canceled. i'm so happy to be winning that i didn't really care to hear some stages were canceled. stage 7 was looking to be very rough and i was happy to not have to risk damaging my car serverly. we come into the service park one last time for the day. we are told the event is running behind and we have to hurry up to go over to the lucas oil facility. i have time to congratulate a few of the other teams for finishing, assuming that no one was going to have a problem on the 4 laps of the 1/4 mile oval. i check the scores and see that i had actually beat all of the CRS-Group 2 cars in a production car ! i had even beat one of the group 5 guys who had some engine issues on a stage.

we pull into the roundy round area and had to wait a long time before doing a parade lap and parking our cars. all the other roundy racers park as well and the fans pour out and check out the cars. an 8 year old girl comes up to me with a program and wants my autograph for her dad. Wow my first autograph, i quickly write my name into her program! what a crazy little feeling. we all pull our cars out of the area and i walk up into the grand stand area to get a hot dog, i eat it down along with a soda and watch 2 of the races before going back to my car for my lil race. i really wanted to put down a great time but i never had time to mount different tires and i go on old rally tires 165 wide , not good at all for paved track but oh well. i luanch pretty hard and set a time 121, then 120.7 , 120.3 and a 19.9 not bad for beat up rally tires! we are all awared a case of lucas oil and our night is over, 300 points to start off my season i couldn't be happier. Most of the teams are loading their rally cars onto their trailers to hit up the hotel , but i want to drive over...

upon turning into the hotel i was hearing a back clicking noise, so in the hotel parking lot where my crew is waiting to change my tires i do some figure 8s and park, and i tell them about the problem, they jack the car up in the air and being investigating. i go to the hotel and grab a head lamp and i put it on and start checking things out, Anthony wants to use my head lamp and tells me its his job to fix it, i walk around the car and over to Tom who tells me , not to worry about it , he has it covered and i should try to relax and do something else... so i go back to the hotel and take a shower, worried my diff is broken but decide to stop worrying. i get out of the shower and they are finishing up on the car and tell me everything is fine and i'm ready for day2. i go to bed but can't really sleep.


http://www.rallydata.com/Results/DesertStorm_2010_Club1Results.htm

[AlexR]

we have to change the clocks before we go to bed , so we don't mess up in the morning and miss the drivers meeting (for a 2nd time!) we eventually nod off. we get up a bit earlier on day2 and double check the sups, drivers meeting is at 8 am and we have plenty of time, we make our usual stops (coffee, mcdonalds) and zoom up to the college. we get there about 30 minutes early, OK i like this. we wonder around and see who's doing what to their cars. and i was honestly still a bit shocked on my day 1 miracle. i knew that stage 1 was really rought, with stage 2 a bit rough, and 3 was very smooth and fast. i decided i needed to back down on stage 1, and make it up on the smooth stuff. esp since i really just needed the 300 points from this weekend no reason to kill my car pushing for more ... or was there?

we took off on this 17 mile transit and right off the bat we run into something unsual ... 4 farmers hearding sheep up the road. wow, is this for real? hey turn on your camera, *click * Dan turns on his in car setup. we are forced to the follow this odd sheep parade with the farmers hearding them mostly along the road with red flags, sticks and some golf cart looking rides. eventually they stop to let some on coming traffic through and i'm able to sneack by using the dirt shoulder to the road, i had to drive over some really rough stuff, but hey I'm in a rally car with skid plates, what ever!

with that out of the way we zoom along the rest of the way with out too much of an issue. at the exit of the highway section we are waiting to turn left at a T intersection with a minivan doing a weird turn around and a team behind us zooms ahead , i laugh a bit, but then when the road turns to dirt and i realize that i have to drive at a pretty good pace through this blinding dust to make my check in time. if we hit a rock real bad we could do some damage to the car before we even start and i can't really see the road that clearly. its a bit stressful but we manage to make it just fine as the driver ahead is at least going at a good pace. we have just enough time to stop that i get out and told him i had to drive kinda fast with out seeing the road too good, but what evers, he was a bit bummed and apoligized and i ran back to start the stage.

We were amped to start and pushed pretty hard up until the first ruts (ruts going across the road) we hit these ruts at about 45 and the suspension compresses fully and the car bounces up into the air about a foot in front and two in the rear. oh wow , crap i'm gonna break my car! i decide to back down a bunch for the ruts the next series i slow down and end up in first, okay .. this is a bit too slow so i pick it up a bit again. we come into the time control and i ask about our time if we beat anyone, we get a no and that the fast Group2 guy ran it much faster. hmm not too surprised or worried we run off to the next stage a short transit and we are off, this stage is very short but has a long rox section (where you drive on very very course gravel instead of hard packed dirt) i pushed fairly hard and we didn't lose as much time. we get a little bit of a chance to ask a couple of competitors behind us how they are doing, not good, sounds like they gained 30 seconds on me at least. :( I try to drive fast on the 3rd stage and we did pretty good. at the turn around area Dan is able to pull up the scores (real time scoring) on his Droid phone. we were down 30 seconds but made back 24 seconds of it and we decided to come up with a plan.

i chat with some other teams and Kevin welker tells me i should up the front dampers a bit, but not too much as we don't know how liner the dampening is. i crawl under the car and turn each side up 5 clicks. we decide we have to push really hard on on the next stage and try to hold onto our lead, i had already climbed up 3 places on stage.

As we start off on stage 4 i think much less how i don't need to win any of the 200 points days and more start thinking that "i'm losing" and start pushing really really hard and set a good stage times and we climbed 3 more places and went from 6 seconds behind to leading my class by 26 seconds!! time to keep with it i push hard on stage 5 and only lose 1 second to the truck who seems to be having an eaier time with the really bad washes. with a 25 second lead i can't go too slowly or i'll lose, but i don't ant to brek the car either. i push pretty hard through the rough stuff and all out on the smooth, we come into the final time control estatic as what we had made it through, as it was really hard to control the car when it was getting bucked around by the dips. we wait and hear that we were about 13 seconds slower but stil have an 11 second lead.

we start to relax and take off our helmets and put them in the back just as i'm loosening up my belts i nail a Rock on my left hand. :( i slow down and roll down my window and i can hear that i'm losing air! oh no! we can't afford to come in to the last time control late or we'll lose! i hop out and look around, the back rim is managled so i pick up a large rock and start beating my rim back into shape, but i break the rock in half, using the better of the two halves i give it a couple more hits and the rock breaks again, the rim is now holding air, but there's no way i'm going to want to drive 75 on the highway on it, so i go into the trunk as fast as i can. there's our rattle gun, spare tire, tool bad and scisor jack with a 19mm lug welded to it. great, as we go to unbungie the bag from the spare tire we realize its stuck in a panic / quick thinking move i have dan hold up the bag and i undo the spare tire holder, with the spare tire out of the car we push on the back of the bungie hooks and free the tool bad. Dan looks through for the 19mm lug, and i get the scisor jack into place, Dan clicks it on and hands it over, with a pull of the trigger the rattle gun lifts the car and i click the trigger into reverse and take off the rim and roll it back to Dan and i put the new one one, and i put the lugs on and zoom them forward . then i let the jack and car down and toss everything into the trunk. we now have to drive pretty quick on the dirt and the speed limit everywhere to make it to our trasit on time.

going into the bug check station from AZ to CA i had a few guys cut me off and i needed to make up time. we keep checking mileage and time to see if we will make it. finally we are pulling into the college and up to the time control. 16 seconds is how long we have to wait to be on our minute (so we came into the last control with 1:16 to spare) Wow! now that's cutting it close!!

http://www.rallydata.com/Results/DesertStorm_2010_Club2Results.htm

[AlexR]

day 2 stage 3: 10:02
YouTube- Stage 12

day 2 stage 4: 9:38 (my best of sunday)
YouTube- 2010 Desert Storm Rally

day 2 stage 6: 8:48
YouTube- 2010 Desert Storm Rally

[dknv]

Congratulations, Alex! Great start to the season!

[Mak_Gueli]

Hi John, These are some nice shots. That Focus was like unreal. I need to go take some shots of the big boys now. Although I do like the old Escorts alot. Ill be back up there at the end of the month for the RAC rally.