What happens when you take a rally car on a moto-x course? Air, followed by the crunch of steel hitting dirt.

I was prepared for a rough event at the Gravity Park Twin Performance Rallies in Chilton Wisconsin, yesterday. I wasn’t expecting quite so many jumps. The Gravity Park event is run in and around a moto-x track. The organizers set up a two mile stage that we run multiple times in both directions. The day is two events each consisting of five laps around the course.

We started out with a two-pass “route familiarization” in the morning, so we could note all the jumps and corners. That went well, and John Huebbe (taking a break from navigating the rally bug with his brother) and I were able to put together some solid notes. That helped us start off on the attack, and we set the fastest overall time on the first two stages. A mistake in the field on the third stage saw us drop some time, and at the break to reverse the course, we were in second overall, with a healthy lead in Group 2.

During the break, it started raining, and the warning from zero car was that the field was extra-slippy this time. I decided to take it easy for the last two stages of the first event, and slipped to fourth overall, but maintained the Group 2 victory.

Looking at the last times from the first event, I knew that Paul Koll and Chris Greenhouse were pushing hard, and I had to drive at the edge if I was going to get the class win in the second event. I pushed a little too hard on the first stage, and lost time when I almost spun through the hay bale chicane at the finish. That gave Chris a two second advantage. I was able to take one second back on the second stage, but at a price. I didn’t brake for one of the jumps in the moto-x course, and nosed the car in hard. After the stage, my neck was sore, and so was John’s back. Paul unfortunately suffered an axle failure (his second of the day), so it was down to Chris and I to battle for the class win.

My luck with no car damage came to an end on the third stage. I hit a jump a little crooked, and the uneven landing was too much for my transmission to handle. I lost second gear, but was able to finish the stage using first and third. Inspection after the stage revealed that the damage to the transmission was terminal, and we were forced to put the car on the trailer and watch the final two stages.

Much thanks to Gravity Park and the organizers for a well run, albeit tough event. I’ll be trying to get the new transmission installed for Nemadji II, but if I can’t make that our next event will be the East Coast MaxAttack! round at New England Forest Rally.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.