Jim & Kaari's Rally Diary

Chapter 8

SnoDrift ProRally 2002

We had another really fun time at SnoDrift this year. Our sincere thanks go out to everyone involved in making the rally happen. Here's a few highlights from our weekend:

Pre-race preparations on the new hauler kept us up all night Wednesday but luckily our crew guy Kurt was willing to drive the whole way to Atlanta, so we were able to get some sleep. Thanks Kurt!

Weather was perfect for driving to Atlanta, for workers, for spectators, and for service crews. On Saturday we were doing service without even wearing jackets! That beautiful weather made racing really tough though. More on that later.

Our biggest challenge this weekend occurred before the event started. Tech was not going to let us run due ball joint and tie rod boot tears. It was 2 hours til Park Expose and I had a sick feeling we weren't going to make it. Luckily, the local parts store had the items in stock and a local mechanic had an empty stall and nothing to do. So about an hour later we were fixed-up and ready to go. Except that I'd already been through as much stress as an entire normal rally, and the event hadn't even started yet.

The next hurdle was tire choice. This was very difficult. I'd brought a set of ice tires and a set of snow/mud tires. The conditions were sure to include both ice and dirt/mud. Normally at SnoDrift, I'd just choose the ice under these circumstances. However, our ice tires are very fragile first generation Blizzaks, and I expected to be running over some rough ground due to the low snow cover (and hitting dirt banks) so I decided starting on the tougher Hakka 10C snow tires would be best. In hindsight, I don't know if there was a "right" tire for this event. The snow tires (Friday) did not stick to the icy sections and had us out of control and off the road a lot. I hit about 6 banks hard enough that I'm sure an ice tire would have blown off the rim, but at least the stiff tractionless Hakkas never lost air.

Conditions also made choosing a pace difficult. I never could figure out the roads. There was no consistant indicator of how much traction was avalible (color, shade vs direct sun,...). Even corners with churned up dirt that looked like perfect traction sometimes were, and sometimes had ice underneath. Adding to the dilemma was knowing that we were running on vulnerable tires.

Friday was frustrating because I felt like I did the worst driving of my short career. We went off numerous times, overshot many "90 onto sideroad" and generally felt like team spaz. Our intercom didn't work and I had a cold which must have interfered with my hearing, because there was a lot of shouting and "what? which way? Huh?" going on. However, since we didn't get stuck and had no flats, we ended up 1st Club Production, 6th Club Overall, our best result ever. Go figure, worst drive ever=best finish ever??? (Co-driver's note: it was also one of the worst co-driver performances ever--on the now-famous "speed trap transit" I was encouraging Jim to drive faster because I remembered the transit time as being really tight from last year. I completely spaced out the "25 mph Quiet Zone" in the route book. Oops. Anyway, now I know what to use that extra highlighter in my Rally bag for--speed limits! Oh yeah, and that "SPD" button on my computer...)

Saturday I wanted more traction, so I went with the Blizzaks, an ice tire that is not very durable. At first I was very happy. Especially since the roads Sat AM had re-frozen and were EXTREMELY slippery. I REALLY liked the consistant slippery roads Saturday morning. I felt very good about our speed and felt confident we could better our 6th overall from the previous day. However by Sat PM, things were melting fast and conditions were back to inconsistent. I tried to only slide the truck sideways when absolutely needed and made sure that if we were going to contact a bank, I had the wheels steered into it and the power on to minimize the chance of pushing a Blizzak off the bead. Alas, one mile into the longest stage (15 miles) I blew a "left at "T" and hit a bank with the side of the wheel and poof!, out went the air. I decided we had to change the tire on stage since:

- we had 14 miles to go,

-both other Production Club cars were having problems,

-I didn't want to risk a finish by trying to drive out 14 miles on three tires and breaking something.

As it turned out, we could have taken 8 minutes to change that tire and still won our class, but since we didn't know this at the time, we worked as fast as we could--and maybe faster than we should have. The truck ended up slipping off the jack and wedging the jack between the a-arm and sway bar such that I couldn't get it out. I treid to drive the truck backwards (with the jack extended) to rip it loose without success. Then Kaari used the lid of one of our tool boxes and our second spare tire to build a ramp to drive the flat tire up onto in order to wrestle the jack free. I also managed to lose a lug nut in the mud and I wasn't sure how much air was in the spare. Thirteen minutes later we were back on the road with flashers on limping in to the control. I guess we'll be practicing tire changes before the next race...I would think that some video of our tire change routine would be much more entertaining than video of our race. I was quite bummed out because I felt that this was probably our best race yet and a good chance at improving our Seed. Oh well. We're getting used to irony: Saturday's result was one of my better drives and also one of my worst finishes. Oh well, that's rally.

The spectators at this event were great. They were plentiful and very enthusiastic. We saw flags, fires, snowmen, groups of snowmobilers... The worse I drove, the happier they seemed to be ; ) If I hit a bank, they cheered loudly. If I went completely through the bank, into the ditch, and back onto the road they would also point and jump up and down. If I went through the bank, through the ditch, into the woods, around some trees and back onto the road in a completely different location, the crowd went completely nuts slapping their friends on the back and throwing beer in the air ; ) (Strangely enough, the co-driver also went completely nuts when he did that, but for different reasons!)

As the night wore on, the bonfires got bigger and the snowmen were popping up everywhere. By the end of the evening, I thought the rally fans would be burning cars and furniture (damn glad we didn't get that flat after dark--the ole' rally barge is probably pretty flammable). We managed to escape the last few stages without flattening a snowman or going up in flames, and ended up second in class but last-to-finish in Drift.

Initially I was a little dejected at the outcome of the event, feeling like I'd squandered a great opportunity for a really nice finish, but after I saw all the damaged cars and heard about everyone else's flat tires I don't feel so bad and I'm happy again. (Ditto for the co-driver--I was really bummed about blowing that Quiet Zone thing until I discovered that about 80% of the navvies did the same thing, either deliberately because of the tight transit or accidentally, like me.)

Other event notes:

-I really liked the removal of the 5 minute gap and the mixing of the Pro/Club fields. But I'd guess the Pros may not have been too excited about our ratty truck in their midst.

-The transits at this event seem really tight.

-If the "speed trap transit" really was placed there because the landowners were concerned about speeding, then the competitors should have been warned to be careful in this section and the transit time should have been increased.

 Back to Jim & Kaari's Rally Diary

Back to Jim & Kaari's Auto Racing Page  

Back to Jim & Kaari's Home Page