Mt. Hood Rally - Oops!
by brian @ 15:15:26 - [perma-link]Josh and I raced in the Mt. Hood Rally over the weekend and had a
blast. Friday we did recce in my Vanagon. It held up to the trails
pretty well, and we managed to make some pretty good notes on all the
stages. The race was on Saturday. We started off pretty well. I took it a little easy on the first
stage, just working out the kinks and getting a feel for the car, the
road and our notes. With no glaring issues, I stepped it up on the
next set of stages. We passed a car just after the spectator area on
Stage 3, the 13-mile Fir Mountain road. I'm hoping there was someone
at that corner getting video of us coming down the hill right behind
the other car. When we went back to service at the halfway point, we were in 3rd
place in Group 2. On the next 2 stages (repeats of Gilhouley and Fir
Mountain) we opened up our lead a bit further, while Matt's co-driver
was too busy puking to call corners. Then the sun set. We started out on 17 South in the dark, and only made it about halfway
through the stage. There were 2 fast left turns followed by a long
sweeping right. I misjudged it and carried too much speed into the
right turn, and when I tried to correct the car swapped ends. We slid
backwards off the edge of the road, and slid sideways for a short
distance on the shoulder. Then the car either hit something, or the
shoulder sunk, or something and we quickly rolled over smacking the
rear-quarter on the passenger side against a tree and coming to rest
on the roof. Neither of us was hurt. The car looks pretty bad, but I
think it will buff out. ;) That's the end of the rally season. With the DNF at Mt. Hood, I think
I blew our chances of a decent showing in the Northwest series.
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