The alarm roused us at 6am and we were greeted by a bright and sunny dawn. No, wait, that’s not how it was. It was dismal, depressing, and bitterly cold. The rain was also just beginning to drip from the ominous clouds, portending the bearing of the nascent day. In fact, by the time coffee had steamed our inards and the slow drive to Salem had begun, the precipitation had picked up the pace.
After a quick run to the sole gas station in Salem with 93 octane, we gathered with our fellow gladiators under the gloomy sky in downtown Salem for the day’s Parc Expose. Usually this is an extremely jubilant and exciting time but the weather kept the crowds of curious locals and fans mostly away and the crews huddled under awnings and in storefronts trying to maintain some semblance of aridity. This proved futile, especially during the drivers meeting. James E had arrived that morning and joined up with Phil and Jeff to form the triumvirate of crewing goodness. None-too-soon, it was time to send the first car off to chase their fortune in these challenging conditions. Ms. Salem was nowhere to be seen this year. Our success the day before meant we had moved well up the field, starting in 21st position, or solidly in the mid-pack. Cody and I agreed this would be very important today, as the farther back you are, the worse the ruts and road conditions will be and each passing car also increases the chance of the stage being stopped.
In all my years of helping out with the rally, I’d really never driven these roads in the rain, let alone the torrential downpour accompanying us to the start of Stage 6: Loop Southern. This was a reverse running of the last stage from the night before. Those of you paying attention will have already recalled my mention of all the water crossings on that stage and the fact that it had now been raining heavily for several hours and deduced that things were going to be interesting. Certainly this was making the rounds of our imaginations as the sound of water splashed through the bare floor as we transited down Hwy. 19.
Of course, this is rally. There are no red flags for rain. Or are there? We arrived at the arrival time control to find the entire field sitting there, engines off, crews milling about with nervous energy mixed with tedium and anticipation. Quickly the word came down the cue that the stage would still be run but a tree was down across the road that the 0 car was busy clearing. A bit later the unmistakable sounds of the Open class cars signaled that the stage had gone hot. We were informed of a new instruction regarding the tree and that the gap cut was big enough for a car, if only just. It was marked as a triple caution, the highest there is.
Our minute arrives at long last and we are off down the fast, wet stage. It quickly became clear to me that my innocent hopes that the road wouldn’t really be that much slicker (it is gravel after all, right?) with the rain were misplaced. While I’ve ice-raced and rallycrossed in mud and snow what ultimately had less traction than these drenched Missouri roads, this was by far the most difficult driving I have ever done. I think this is because the speeds are higher (we were still averaging around 60mph!), there is extremely little room for error, and this was a highly competitive race, not playing on a snow day where its not a big deal to brake early or otherwise back off. I can’t count the number of times during the day I thought we were doomed. Just to press home the point, we passed three cars off on this stage, unfortunately including our own Kim DeMotte, who was co-driving for Justin Pritchard.
It was shortly after we passed the second of these crashed cars that we had our own little incident. We were coming into a sharp, short dip. It had been dry the night before but now, as it turned out, it had a good 6 inches of water in it. I broke somewhat for it, but not too much and the front end dug in a bit. This is pretty standard. However, the water forced its way up underneath my plastic bumper cover and lifter it off right in front of my eyes and then it whoosed past on my side. Cody, being the diligent co-driver, didn’t notice as he had his head down in the notes and was quite alarmed when the finish workers informed him we had no bumper! Meanwhile, I only had two thoughts go through my head. The first was that I hoped Sweep recovered at least the license plate since I’d just gone through the hassle of getting my stolen tags replaced. The second revolved around our light bar, even though it was only about 11am. The bar bolts to the upper radiator support and is tied to the lower support but it sits on the bumper cover, which extends out and up beyond the bumper beam proper. Without the cover, the lights would point at the ground and be unsupported.
We finished the remainder of the stage without too much drama and headed to the second running of Little Scotia. Here, however, we discovered we were not the only ones who came out rain or shine, snow or sleet. Yes, the first half of the stage up until the spectator point had to be transited because of a conflict with the post man. It was a shame to not get to but on a good show for the spectators gathered, but I did try to launch a little harder than normal to thank them for sticking around in the miserable conditions. Scotia was just as slippy as the previous stage and we did our best to survive it. On both stages, we had fairly severe traction issues. This manifest itself in several tenths of a mile worth of wheel spin according to the rally computer, but more importantly in the odious understeer. The new springs had helped the car some, as had reverting to the larger front swaybar, but I think the swaybar hurt us in these conditions. The tires (which I also used at 100AW last year as well as the Rallye du Paris) also were no longer at their best. This resulted in the front end washing out all the time. Even on straights above 60-70mph, the front end would just be done and even on flat out turns I would have to give the throttle half a lift to set the nose so I could change direction even a bit. Discretion being the better part of valor, we made it to the finish without further loss of body parts.
Stage 8 was just outside Viburnum, so we had a long transit to make. This stage is a real hoot and, much to our surprise, was fairly dry. The rainfall was in one of its many ebbs and it seemed like the stage was paved compared to the southern ones we had left behind. Objectively, there wasn’t as much grip as there had been the day before in the dry, but it felt so nice to be able to be aggressive with the car. This was also probably helped knowing my wife was marshalling somewhere on the stage. The spectators were also great and I was bewildered at their numbers given the inclement weather. The spectator spot was at the end of this long, crested straight into a medium right that tightened as it went downhill. There were a group of guys on the top of the crest motioning us to go flat out and, having confirmation from Cody, that’s what we did. We must have passed them doing over 80mph and you could see how into it they were! It helped encourage me to push really hard into the right afterwards, and we were flying. The finish was also a hoot, as it was this fast, kinked blast down a steep hill. In rally trim, the RS really doesn’t accelerate much once you go to 4th gear at about 70mph...except downhill! Good times, good times.
A thankfully short transit later and we’re at the Viburnum High School for service. The rain had picked up again and the conditions Jeff, James, and Phil had to work in could only be described as arduous. It was cold, clammy, and miserable. They didn’t care. Or if they did, they pushed it aside to get the car fixed and ready to tackle the next four stages; the fastest of the rally. James rotated tires while Phil checked over the suspension and engine. Meanwhile, Jeff demonstrated his capacity for carpentry, bolting a piece of lumber to the front bumper beam and test fitting the lights for later. As much as it pains me to say, this setup actually worked better than with the bumper cover, though it garnered us more than a few odd looks from control workers and residents who were watching us transit past their homes. Phil declared that the car looked like a duck. Whether you agree with his assessment or not, we all determined that this was propitious given the weather.
Beyond rotating the tires to try and get fresher (less worn, really) rubber up front, I opted to drop the tire pressures to hopefully better match the muddy conditions. In a completely and totally scientific method that would be too loquacious to describe in detail, I figured that dropping 4psi out of the front would give the front tires the optimal grip for the road conditions and a 2psi drop in the rear would aide rear traction, but not as much as the fronts, thus exorcising the understeer back to the netherworld. Fix the car, save the priest’s fees; job well done. I wash my hands of the matter.
One calamity did befall us at service. The MTC workers hadn’t mentioned it when we came in, and it wasn’t on the Official Notice Board, but the service had been shortened by 20 minutes to make up for the delays caused by the errant tree. Our new ‘out time’ was on the new score card we had been handed, but Cody had simply done the math on when we were to leave and hadn’t looked at the card. I started getting worried when I noticed people down the order from us heading to check out. We figured out our error after a bit of confusion and raced to leave. We picked up a penalty for being late, and we did take some consolation that a number of teams suffered similar fate, but now we were down the running order and back in a scrap for 2nd in class.
As we slowly regained our composure heading to Stage 9, it came to my attention that in the bustle and haste to limit the damage from our timing error, the crew had not had time to refuel the car. I breathed a prayer of thanks under my breathe that I had topped off in the morning and hoped we would have enough to make it back….