Run on Forest Service roads in the Cherokee National Forest (March 15-17), the Cherokee Trails International Rally proved to be a most demanding event. The first FIA-sanctioned rally in the United States since 1987, when the World Rally Championship visited Washington state and the Olympus Rally, the Cherokee Trails International Rally boasted only 23 of the original 61 starters finishing.
Running under FIA rules meant a number of organizational changes, a different timing and scoring system, as well as the return of pace-notes to normally 'blind' SCCA ProRally!
On The Rally"The roads are superb, as good as any in the world." -John Bennie, winning co-driver
"The roads were technical, which I like. I like tighter corners." -John Buffum, second overall
"Fantastic, totally! This is a great event." -Matt Chester, co-driver- whose rally was cut short by a large rock
"It's very technical here, with lots of rocks. Well, we didn't hit any, but they were there." -Seamus Burke, third overall
English driver Richard Tuthill teamed with Scottish co-driver John Bennie to win the rally and bring their Mitsubishi EVO IV home almost five minutes ahead of John Buffum and Neil Wilson's Hyundai Tiburon. Seamus Burke and Frank Cunningham finished in the third spot, three and a half minutes behind Buffum and 13.5 minutes ahead of the fourth-place duo of Tim Paterson and Scott Ferguson. In what was probably the drive of the rally, Andrew Havas and Rod Hendrickson finished fifth overall and first in Group 5, their 22-year old Mazda RX-7 just 12 seconds ahead of Group N winners Henry and Cindy Krolikowski's Subaru WRX.
Lauchlin O'Sullivan came back from a year off and, with co-driver John Dillon, won Production GT, the more powerful Eclipse besting the more nimble Mazda GTX of Gail Truess and Pattie Mayers. Local heroes, Randy Bailey and Will Perry, from Soddy Daisy, Tenn. won Group 2 driving a 1988 Isuzu Impulse in the team's first ProRally. Their 11-minute margin would not have been as large if a broken steering knuckle hadn't slowed the VW GTI of Eric Burmeister and Mark Buskirk. Somehow, Burmeister was able to continue after making an on-stage repair-using a large rock! In Production, Jeff Field and Ole Holter used a Mike Halley-built Dodge Shadow to beat...Mike Halley and Joshua Bressem in the now-famous New Beetle rally car.
Mechanical woes struck the rally even before it started. The three-car Knight Racing team planned to debut its Subaru WRXs at Cherokee Trails, but the transporter broke down and a replacement could not be found in time. Noel Lawler's Tiburon made it to Scrutineering with just minutes to spare after the team repaired a leaking head gasket on the Tiburon's freshly rebuilt engine. Doug Shepard and Chris Whiteman both lost gearboxes on the transit to the first stage.
Overnight rains made the clay-and-gravel logging roads very slippery; seven cars went off-road in the first stage alone. As a result, so many cars were time-barred by the end of the first day's five stages that it was decided the "also-rans" could follow the ClubRally cars and, while not eligible for points, complete the event. Buffum won the first stage, Tuthill the next two and Lawler was fastest through stages Four and Five with the Prodrive Subarus of Lovell and Scheible and the Mitsubishi EVOs of Millen, Burke, Patterson, Lawless and Lahm all in contention at the end of the day's stages. Mechanical woes continued for the top teams. Karl Sheible had been battling overheating problems and his engine seized as he pulled into service after the day's last stage. Rhys Millen made it back to Chattanooga and a two-hour service but could not find the parts needed to repair his Mitsu's transmission.
The weather had cleared and the roads were drying for the start of day two. Tuthill was fastest through stage six with Lawler fastest on seven. Mark Lovell started having transmission problems and the team was ready to swap gearboxes at the next service. With half a stage to go, the box packed it in and sent Lovell and Turvey into the woods. Buffum was slowed by a balky alternator and took a penalty for leaving service late after changing it. On stage eight, Tuthill slid wide and tagged a tree, breaking out the taillight. Moments later a hard-charging Lawler hit the same tree and rolled his Tiburon down a 60-foot bank. Fortunately, Lawler and co-driver Charlie Bradley walked away unhurt.
Day three was cold and dry and mostly uneventful. With Buffum slowed by his alternator troubles and several of the other top contenders already on their trailers, Tuthill set fastest time on all five of the days stages to claim the victory.
On Pace Notes"These guys will be faster than ever," -anonymous FIA observer
"I was freaking out about this. Pace notes are a black art for sure," -Matt Chester
"This is the biggest challenge I have had in a while."-Brian Maxwell, co-driver
"All us American guys were falling all over each other (during the 'recce')," -Matt Chester
"Because of the time required (days off from work) and the distance, I could do two PORs or six STPRs," -Adrian Wintle Co-driver from Toronto Canada
Cherokee Trails was the first pace-noted rally in the United States in quite some time, legally anyway. The decision to use pace notes raises a number of issues. Time (and money for hotels etc.) becomes a factor, as the teams need to be at the venue early in order to do the 'recce' and write their notes. The organizers must open the roads to competitors for more days, which can be a problem in some areas. And what do organizers do for competitors who cannot make the 'recce' runs?
One answer is to make "supplied" notes available to all competitors. Those who are there for the 'recce' can fine-tune the notes to their liking and those who cannot, at least have a starting point. If U.S. rallying switches to pace-notes, one option available to get everyone up to speed would be to start with supplied notes and no recce. This would cut the time commitments required of competitors and give everyone practice with notes, before gradually moving to fully 'recce'd' rallies. The big concern with supplied notes is consistency. Would all the events on the schedule use the same system to generate the notes? Or would one rally's "slow" be another's "medium"? On the other hand, I was told the crash rate on British and Scottish rallies dropped from 50 percent to just 3 percent when the "blind" rallies switched to supplied notes. Stay tuned.
The Cherokee Trails Rally hired Bruno Bergland to generate the supplied notes. A "note-checker" for the Subaru rally teams in Europe, he drove every stage with a laptop connected to accelerometers, steering angle gauges and who knows what other high-tech doodads. The laptop recorded all the various inputs and, using a program Bergland developed, spit out a set of pace-notes.
Mark William, the person in charge of pace-notes and a well-respected co-driver: "Many co-drivers were confused the first day of recce and couldn't come to grips with the notes. Then they got used to them and I've gotten many favorable comments, 'I love them!' and 'This is fantastic.'"
On Co-Drivers"You have to have more trust in your co-driver than anyone else, more trust than in your wife. Your co-driver HAS to be right," -Jeff Denmeade, course open car - 18 years of FIA rally experience.
"In a pace note event, the co-driver is almost more important than the driver," -Richard Tuthill, winning driver.
"Drivers Win, Navigators Lose," -old rally adage.
A good co-driver on a blind rally can claim responsibility for about 10 percent of a team's time. On a pace-note event, most people are convinced the co-drivers contribution is about 30 percent. Those same people also say it takes a driver and co-driver a least five years to develop their pace-note system and, more importantly, the trust required in each other to compete at the sport's highest level. Trust is the biggest thing in pace-notes.
In a gracious awards banquet comment, Richard Tuthill said, "John (Bennie) has managed to manage me-I need a bit of managing at times-kept me on the boil; kept me concentrated; told me to go quicker; told me to go slower. Anyone out there who doesn't realize what a co-driver does should have seen us out there the last couple of days and they would realize just how important a co-driver is."
On The Possibility Of The WRC Coming To The United States "We and other countries are pursuing hosting a round of the WRC and there is no reason to believe we can't." -John Shirley, Clerk of the course
"Everything we can't fix doesn't need to be fixed." -Anonymous FIA observer
"There is rumor, speculation or hope that the WRC schedule can accommodate up to two more event." -Mark Williams
"From a manufacturer's point of view, Chattanooga's infrastructure makes it a great base city for any rally, national or international,"-Chris Hosford, Hyundai Motors America.
"I'll be diplomatic and say the organization needs a bit of work. But they know that and are cool with it. They've done a good job for a first time and have got the bare bones of a brilliant rally here," said John Bennie. "It works well. Chattanooga is a good central base and it's a good, compact event out in the forest."
Cherokee Trails has a way to go before it sees a round of the World Rally Championship. There is competition for any available slots here in North America; both Mexican and Canadian events are also vying to host a round of the championship. Norway and India are also lobbying for a WRC event. But as Prodrive's Ed Bentley pointed out, "Your population is massive and manufacturer's interest (in the U.S. market) is massive. Interest in rallying in the States is growing. Hopefully, you will get a World Championship Rally in a couple of years."
It will be at least a couple of years. This year's event will generate unofficial reports to the FIA. If everything is favorable and some of this year's rough edges are smoothed, the organizers can apply to be an "observed candidate event" and be officially observed by the FIA. After clearing that hurdle, the rally would need to host a round of a major championship, probably a round of the Asia-Pacific Championship, before applying to host a round of the World Rally Championship. Keep your fingers crossed.
Prodrive: TeamSubaruProdrive is here. The English concern is probably best-known for fielding the factory Subaru World Rally Championship team. It also builds race and rally cars for privateers, builds some awesomely fast special-edition road cars and has a design and development department that works for various manufacturers on secret projects like...well, it's a secret.
Prodrive is also technically a car manufacturer. "We buy a donor WRX Sti from Japan, strip it to a bare shell, take all the under-seal off, weld in a roll-cage, rebuild the engine and transmission, fit a competition suspension, fit a fuel system and all the safety aspects and finish the car off as a full Group N spec rally car manufactured by Prodrive," said Ed Bentley, one of Prodrive's account managers. "Everything this car has [notice the four-pot front calipers] must be in the homologation papers that Subaru submits to the FIA. For example, we can't use the WRC car's rear wing. Group N rules require a minimum of 2,500 examples of the car be built by Subaru. Using parts from Subaru and the homologation papers, it would be possible to someone to build a Group N car, but it wouldn't have the Prodrive pedigree."
"We are planning on doing all 10 events and are currently running Subaru Impreza WRX Stis. [Look for an equipment change mid-season!] Karl Scheible and Brian Maxwell are competing in Group N, while Mark Lovell and Steve Turvey are in the Open class. Mark's car is basically full-spec Gp N; it still has the 32mm turbo restrictor, but is running about 150 kilos under the homologation weight, which gives it a bit more speed. Most of the weight was saved in the body shell and we've spent a lot of time on smaller areas.
For example, there is a lightweight battery, a lightweight fire suppression system and we used the WRC carbon seats, which are lighter than the Group N seats," continued Bentley. David Campion, Technical Services Manager, said, "It's great working with a bunch of guys that obviously want it all to work. I think Lance and his boys [Lance Smith of Vermont SportsCar] find some of the things we ask them to do a little mind-blowing. 'Really, do we need to do that? I think we ought to be doing that Lance. OK, if you say so...' It's a way of raising the standard and the way we work. At the moment, it is working extremely well. I am very, very pleased. We shall see."