Stage TwoEverything was brown. The road was brown, the cars were brown, the trees were brown, the windshield was brown. The road was heavily rutted, but the ruts were nearly impossible to see. They constantly tugged the car this way or that, and steering inputs seemed to have little effect in this slime.
The transit to stage two had two-way traffic, with the leaders, having already finished the second stage, coming head-on toward us on their way to the first service stop. Common sense said to slow down, physics said if we did so we'd get stuck, so there we were, flying through the muck, tires spinning, car sliding erratically from one side of the road to the other. Rhys Millen was doing the same, and we narrowly miss slamming head on into him. As our windows passed within inches, we could see the grin on his face was almost as big as ours. Insanity loves company.
The start of stage two was frozen and slick. So slick, in fact, that as Richard Byford and Fran Olson tried to inch forward to the start, their BMW 2002 did a slow, graceful pirouette and ended up stuck sideways in the road in front of us. Several navigators jumped from competing rally cars to push them from the muck.
The weighty slime so thoroughly coated the sides of our car that the stage workers had to ask our car number before recording our times. Our hearty mudflaps, which had survived all our "testing and development" miles without complaint, were ripped from the car after just two stages in the slime.
Stages three through six were more of the same-slimefests of epic proportions. The mud became so thick at one point that full throttle in The Beater produced all of 35 mph. At the end of day one, The Beater managed an impressive 10th overall, slotting in right after the open class Galant VR-4 of Keith Roper and Ray Damitio and sneaking in just in front of the Group 2 Eclipse of Christopher Burns and Steve Westwood. The next day was sure to be harder for The Beater as the roads opened up and horsepower became more of a factor.
Faster it was, though momentum was proving itself a fair substitute for horsepower for a while. Pounding up stage 7 out of the grand canyon, we managed to hold our position despite the need for power. After a brief roadside repair stop to fix some loose exhaust bolts, we started into the real horsepower stages where the fast cars were going 140 mph, and we were going 100. That lead directly to the ditch (see "Great Moments in Rallying #3, to the right.)
Driving fast on treacherous, slippery roads you have never seen requires a certain placidity, a certain Zen calmness in the face of unparalleled pressure. Every road has a rhythm, every car has its special moves, and being in the zone means being able to make the car dance. Try dancing after crashing a car, running a quarter mile with a helmet on your head and the thin air of 6,000 feet in your lungs, after spending five minutes jumping around in a ditch like a couple of drunk monkeys. This is the kind of challenge that separates the professionals from the dirt jockeys like us.
The very next stage, still breathing heavy, and still searching for our rhythm, it happened again. This time there was no glorious almost-save. This time it was simple. We went too fast, turned too late, and slid into a small ditch. A very hard small ditch. This, for certain, was the end of the rally for Eyesore Racing.
This brings us up to The Hammer, but you've already heard that one. Finishing the Laughlin rally's 45-mile Canyon Challenge stage after repairing the The Beater with The Hammer may turn out to be the crowning achievement in our motorsport careers. The Canyon Challenge came at the end of the day as the sun was setting. And, as luck would have it, the stage ran primarily east to west. That meant the pucker factor was high as The Beater blasted over blind crests, directly into the blinding sun. However, this time, it stayed on the road and made it to the end of the second day.
Leg Three of the Laughlin event is held in a huge gravel field behind the headquarter's hotel. It's called the SuperStage and is basically a dirt autocross which pits competitors against one another in wheel-to-wheel brawls designed to put a spectator-friendly finishing touch on the event. Organizers match cars which have produced similar stage times on the rally's previous legs to compete together on the two-lane SuperStage course.
The Beater was matched against the RX-7 of Jim Gillaspy and Mick Kilpatrick who had eeked out a fair lead on us the previous two days. The SuperStage, however, proved how well matched the cars really were as the two were given the exact same finishing time on two of the four stages. Naturally, Gillaspy's car was slightly ahead on those runs, but a half car length is invisible in rally time. The other two runs were a draw-one win each. Stage 15 brought to an end one of the longest, roughest and highest attrition races in American rallying in the last 10 years.
In the end, The Beater did all right. Somehow, despite all our efforts to throw it away on stages 10 and 11, The Beater won its class (Group 2) and managed ninth overall-not bad given the number of four-wheel-drive open class cars in this race. And the reward for winning Group 2? One thousand glorious greenbacks! Who says rallying doesn't pay? The ARSG gave away $25,000 in cash and prizes at the awards ceremony after the race.
The organizers of the Laughlin rally have a slogan: "We promise you an adventure," they say. And given the roads, distance and fun factor of this year's event, we couldn't agree more. The Laughlin International Rally epitomizes what rallying should be: Man vs. road vs. the clock. It is, without question, an adventure.
Great Moments in Rallying #1-DaveI'm Wet!Day one was a mud bog of Mississippi proportions. Melting snow and gravel-free dirt roads added up to a soupy, rutted slimefest for which our beater was remarkably unsuited. With almost no front overhang, mud puddles tend to get sprayed straight up, forming a wall of opacity that landed right on the windshield. Of course, the killer shoebox had no functional windshield squirters, but if the puddle was wet enough, wipers and Rain-X did the job. If not, we were blind until the next wet one.
Then we hit the puddle that no wiper could fix. Rising over a crest, I saw another big dip full of sludge. I guessed at what part of it might be shallowest, made a course suggestion with the steering wheel, and puckered up. The car went weightless for a fraction of a second, then WHUMP! As we bounced through a wall of mud, I heard Josh groan as the wind was knocked from his lungs. Then, in an incredulous tone "I'm wet!" We sealed the shifter hole with duct tape at the next service stop.
Surviving The Ballast SeatBefore rallying for the first time, I always wondered what would possibly posses anyone to ride in the ballast seat of a rally car. I quickly came to that conclusion before we headed into our first rally last fall-it's the next best thing to actually driving and it's really not a bad thing to do before getting behind the wheel of a rally car yourself.
Sure, there are the obvious and practical advantages like the fact that co-driving gives a future driver the benefit of understanding what's realistic to expect from a navigator. It also helps one understand the bureaucracy involved in making a rally happen and what it takes to keep a rally team on time. However, you can learn all that in rally school (rally schools are held twice annually in the SCCA's Cal Club region and other regions nationwide). What I'm here to tell you is how to survive life from the ballast seat without going insane (because you're not driving), how to keep your driver on the road and how to keep your lunch in your stomach.
First of all, the sanity thing: This is no doubt the hardest part of living in the ballast seat. Here are a few tips. First, listen to everyone that tells you rallying is a team effort. It is, and all those people at rally school weren't lying. While American rallying requires less from the navigator than a full-fledged pace noted European-style event, the consequences of a bad call are every bit as devastating.
Second, learn to love it. It's extremely rewarding when things work smoothly between driver and navigator. Every time the navigator does something right, confidence is built in the driver/navigator relationship. Not to mention, the car goes faster-which is, of course, the ultimate goal.
Finally, whether you're with an experienced driver or not, you can always have fun. There's nothing more fun than riding with someone who's really fast-every well-executed turn is entertaining. However, every driver makes mistakes. And there's nothing funnier than watching a driver fumble (at least when you're not too serious about winning). Just don't let a hint of that laughter reach a driver's ear. Because, as you know if you're aspiring to drive, all driver's have egos like eggshells. Handle them carefully and you're sure to go fast.
Keeping your driver on the road goes hand-in-hand with building his or her confidence in your abilities to know what's coming down the road. Be consistent. They'll tell you in rally school to develop a language and use it all the time-they're right. Do it. Use the same numbers every time to describe distance. Use the same words every time to describe the angles of similar corners.
Keeping your lunch down is perhaps the most important part of the equation. The rally community in Southern California is fraught with stories of navigators who couldn't manage this task and filled their helmets with goo. I decided first thing that I wouldn't be a victim of my own gastric indulgences and now take precautions before every rally. Ever hear of Dramamine? Well, it works. Take some about an hour before getting in the car. I also build up to every event with a cocktail of Pedialyte-an electrolyte replacement. Don't ask me why, but it really helps. Much credit for this anti-nausea recipe, as well as much of the rest of the advice listed here goes to Paula Gibeault, a national level co-driver who knows her business from the navigator's seat. Gibeault and her husband Mike also put together the rally schools I mentioned and have been key in maintaining rallying in Southern California for years. They know what they're doing, we listen to them and it helps us go faster. You should too. -Josh Jacquot
Great Moments in Rallying #2-DaveFull Moon Over The Grand CanyonDay 2, Stage 7. The first stage of day two was already looking like an entirely different rally. The unique terrain of the Grand Canyon creates unique weather patterns, and allowed us to race in mud, slush and snow one day, and on warm, dry dusty roads the next. It was more than just the roads that would make this stage different, though, it was the scenery.
From our perspective in the middle of the pack, we didn't get to see much of the front runners, but on this stage, we would get to see entirely too much of some of them.
To no one's surprise, Rhys Millen and Ken Cassidy, in their factory-supported Mitsubishi Lancer EVO VI were running in the lead, and it was equally predictable that Lon Peterson and Bill Gutzmann would be the strongest challengers in their turbocharged Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS, which was rumored to make more than 400 hp. The surprise came about halfway into the stage when we rounded a high-speed left to find the second-place Subaru parked on the right side of the road, abandoned but for the orange "OK" sign propped up against the rear tire.
Across from the car was the real eye opener, though. Faced with an early retirement, Petersen and Gutzman had little choice but to take the California Rally Series' traditional conciliatory pose: a face down, cheeks-out, full moon to the competition.
Ah, rallying. The motorsport of gentlemen.