Day 2 at Rally Colorado
What a mess!
We woke up to a cold and rainy second day at the event. However Brian (team manager) made a great call and had a set of tires grooved (using a special tire iron the cut up some of the sipes or lugs on the tires which opens up the tread). Grooving tires helps to eliminate the amount of mud tha gets stuck in the tires but when conditions are dry those tires don’t have as much grip.
Anyways the day started as a muddy mess and just got worse. We ran Special Stage 15 twice and before we could head to next stage we where told that stage 16 and 17 where cancelled due to really bad road conditions. So we ended up running stage 15 (Middle Cog) two more times. As you can imagine having 30 or so rally cars run the same 7 mile stage 4 times in a row with rain and mud things got really squirrly at the end. Typically after running a stage a couple of times your times get faster – not in this case – times got slower because the conditions SUCKED! However they sucked for everyone equally.
The engine problem wasnt fixed either – so we where still down on power. Then to add insult to injury – with the car struggling for power – road conditions really sucking on one of the uphill starts I crossed the start line 1 second early and was penalized 2 minutes.
- That REALLY SUCKED!
The road penalty pushed us down to 17th overall and 5th in class – not one of our best events. However we finished.
I really like the events – the organizers did a great job with it and I am looking forward to returning next year with the car in better condition.
FOLLOW-UP COMMENT:
When we got back to the shop in Nashua the lead tech on the car, Bill Grooms, did a leak down and compression test on the engine. It was down by almost 40% in two cylinders – know wonder we where so slow.So we put in the spare engine and we are looking to take care of some unfinished business at LSPR next month.
Categories: Rally Events