Back and still recovering from an awesome rally weekend in the PNW, and I have some videos that I just need to edit up a little bit before I share (including some HD dash cam running at speed down course). This weekend I was driving sweep 995 and was assigned 1 stage start and 2 spectator areas.
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Heard a lot of great stories this weekend, here's one from Matt Johnston's rally documentary Kickstarter page: "Cody Crane is here. His first Stage rally in 2 years. Last time he was at this event he finished second, and blazed just about everyone else. This year, he could only afford to do one day of the event. Rumor is his fellow competitors all got together, pooled their cash and paid for his second entry fee. So most likely, his competitors paid for him to beat them. That's rally. It isn't your average sport. Let's tell more of those stories." It started with Cody's FB post 1 week before the rally, "Anyone want to let me race for them at oregon trail? I'm fine with just running at p.i.r thats cool" He finished 1st in Group 2 and 8th overall - his Friday codriver was the guy that donated 4 new gravel tires ("ill still sport you a couple tires, only if you promise to tear the ever living fuck out of them so I can mount one on my wall" - and after he lost the front bumper, the Sweep Captain brought it to the awards banquet for him
Here's Cody ringing it out on the back stretch @ Portland International Raceway:
Brakim Racing gets mad props for Pressing On Regardless, as Wyatt Know (team captain, turned co-driver when the original stepped down) tells it, "02:30 pacific. 05:30 our time. After the wreck, we were in dire need of many Dodge Neon parts. Seeing as it was around 8pm, Saturday, and a Mexican drinking holiday of some sort, we did the only reasonable thing... We bought a $500 Neon off Craigslist, showed up in the guy's driveway, and unleashed 5 mechanics on it. It wasn't long before our new hood, windshield, fenders, bumper, radiator, manifold, and everything else we needed was in the van and we were out of there. His neighbors are going to freak out in the morning for sure. In the middle of what we are sure will be an all-night reprep on the rally car back at the house, our co-driver decides that he has enjoyed his foray into rallying but has no interest in continuing. So I'm handing my team manager crown off for a helmet, if I go to bed now I should have 3 hrs of sleep before the drive to tomorrow's stages. Good fast stuff up in the hills near Mt Hood. If the car gets finished. And still drives fairly straight down the road. Rally On."
and then the next day the driver posted, "All I can say is that I feel we should rename the team to POR... After this weekend I feel that POR (Press on regardless) sums up the team we have it was a crazy weekend, We got second place in class on the first day (could have got first but we had to pass two cars eheheheh) on the second day we were in first place in our class by over 3 minutes after passing two WRX's in our little neon ehehheh but well they got the last laugh as we literally flew off a cliff at 46MPH (all on camera) and hit a tree which luckily and barely kept us from flying off the cliff for a little tumble to the nearest ledge a few hundred feet below but it didn't hurt a bit with all of our safety equipment we couldn't even feel it, the tumble would have been fine too although not preferred eheh after that wreck everyone thought the car was done for the weekend except out team, they bought a neon on craigslist and spent 3 hours tearing it apart in the old owners driveway scavenging all of the MANY parts we needed off of it and they got it running the best they could, with wyatt knox in the passenger seat as the badass he is we pushed on to the first stage of the day with the car going well over normal temperatures and we started the first stage quick with a great stall lol I've never stalled a car in first gear I don't think and no clue what happened but it happened maybe it was a sign because after that great start we pushed hard into the first mile of the course only to watch the hood fly back and smash the windshield at highhh speeds but we never lifted off the gas I pushed on full throttle looking through a 4 inch hole in the windshield (all on video no worries lol) after about a mile of that wide open the car overheated and we almost blew the engine we tried to fix it and continue (POR!!!!) but the safety crew refused to let us continue the race without a windshield (panzys lol jk) we did everything we could and had a GREAT TIME DOING IT! win or lose it was an adventure and we're going to repeat it at STPR in 3 weeks (we might also euro rallycross in jersey in 1.5 weeks so watch our enemy vehicles ehheh jk) what.a.ride."
hood flies open @ 1:38: Oregon Trail National Rally Car #11 Major Hood/Engine Issues
Here are the Rally America videos:
Day 1
Day 2
(I'll post Day 3 once it's released)
Links to some pics:
Rally America gallery
Shelby Starbuck @ Upper North
Waterman At Work blog
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