blackboxrally:
Well, we decided last weekend wasn't enough rallying, so we're going at it again this weekend at RallyNY Summer Rallysprint! The place is 90 minutes northwest of NYC, and right near the border of PA.
Central Service Park Ten Mile River Scout Reservation, 1481 Crystal Lake Road - Route 26, Narrowsburg, New York Google maps: http://goo.gl/maps/K1nI
Itinerary: http://www.rallynewyork.net/itineraryver1.1-03-23-12.pdf More info: http://www.rallynewyork.net/summerrallysprint2012.html
Some videos from our last event:
International Rally New York 2011 day 1 Black Box rally team
MVI_0999.MOV
jerdeitzel:
Sorry to hear about the roll, glad your okay!
Billy:
Yeah, I saw some pics of the car. Didn't want to post, I'll leave that up to you.
Hope you and your co-driver are OK...
blackboxrally:
--- Quote ---Sorry to hear about the roll, glad your okay! --- End quote ---
--- Quote ---Hope you and your co-driver are OK... --- End quote ---
Thanks guys, both Billy and I are fine. All the safety mechanisms worked as intended...
They say there are two types of rally drivers; those that have rolled. and those that will roll. And so it happens that this last weekend, our number was up.
But before we get to that, some context. RallyNY Summer RallySprint was a fast rally. Like topping out 4th gear through narrow logging roads, around 120mph fast. The field was also packed with top tier open class AWD cars, and a healthy Production AWD class showing.
Our first run, we were within 0.2 seconds off the leader, Danny O'Brien/James McKiernan. By the second run, we cut five and half seconds off their time. We were just stunningly fast that day, especially when you consider that our Production AWD class Evo has a little over 1/2 the power of these other open class cars. We had a good rhythm going, and I even decided to turn on the A/C on stage 4. There's something to be said about having air conditioning in your race car :lol:.
Rally NY Summer RallySprint - Crystal Lake 1
RallyNY Summer RallySprint - Crystal Lake 2
Rally NY Summer RallySprint - Mortimer Schiff 4 At the end of stage 6, it was clear that we were now also trading places with Cyril & Caitlin Kearney in 2nd place overall. Now, i could say that we were trying to go flat out; pin it to win it. But the reality is, in rally, you're really just racing yourself out there. And that's exactly what our plan was, to get faster and faster with each run. On stage 7, we were just flying through the course. We were on pace to PR that stage; Martin Donnelly, one of the fellow rallyists that had DNF'd earlier, was keeping track of times. He'd come up later to tell us that we had 5 seconds on the leader at the half way point.
Rally NY Summer RallySprint - Crystal Lake 3 And so of course that's when it happened. Coming from a downhill 5 right (~100mph) into a 5 left, we hit a kink in the road that upset the rear of the car. Next thing i see, we're pointing towards the trees. Unfortunately I didn't catch the slide in time, and at those speeds, the slightest error is often catostrophic. At this point, I knew we were in for a ride. I tried my best to pull the car back towards the road, but the laws of physics and I began having an intense argument.
The laws of physics, however, were not as upset with me as the tree we clipped.
That tree took the rear left of the car off, and the resulting impact spun the car 180 degrees and put it on its side. Next thing you know the car is dragging on the ground before finally rolling back onto the wheels. So, like any driver just recovering from a recent accident, the moment the car came onto its wheels, i dropped the clutch and punched the throttle. The lack of rear axles on the car disagreed intensely.
It was then that I realized we had a whole set of other problems. Within a minute (or less), there would be *another* rally car coming towards us at 100mph, and we were now facing the *wrong* direction, *blocking* the entire road. Luckily, the novice competitor training was beginning to pay off at this point. Instinctively, Billy darted out of the car with triangles to alert the incoming car. He managed to get to them in time, which was good, because at that moment, i was now realizing that i couldn't open my door or window. I crawled out the passenger side of the car to find this:
That didn't look so bad until i swung around the other side and realized what had actually happened, and why the car wasn't moving.
After directing traffic around our rally car, we were greeted by the sweep team. Gary DeMasi, Nick Dunn, Art, and Bobby. They helped pull us off the road and made sure we were OK. Many thanks to them for their help. These are folks that you never want to see on the rally, but sure as heck are glad they are there when you need them.
After the last stage was run, we threw our rally evo back on the trailer. We have a standing tradition on the team. When we do well, we have a celebratory dinner at Longhorn. And when we don't...McDonalds :).
And now the fun part begins, getting the car rebuilt. We'll be back.
Thanks to all the organizers and volunteers for helping to put together this great event. Thanks to all the competitors for stopping to check on us after the crash. Thanks to the Black Box rally crew; Mike, William, and Cat, for doing their best to keep us going at the rallysprint.
marka:
Howdy,
Glad to hear you're ok! Sounds like you were really killing it out there. And then you killed it. :-)
Also glad to hear that you'll be able to rebuild it and be back.