SCCA RallyCross at Thunderhill, November 2002

Dirty lessons, dirt cheap

This fall, I purchased skid plates front and rear for my subie and looked for more dirty events to enter. In November, the folks from the California Rally Series were going to host their first Rally School at Thunderhill, followed by a RallyCross on the second day. The school was an intense six hours of classroom instruction followed by two hours of driving on dirt obstacle courses. The class room sessions had one hour lectures on everything from car prep, to rally timing, to rules and car classifications. The instructors were all seasoned rallyist including Ben Bradley and veteran navvie John Dillon. The driving was great too. They had a fully rally prepped Mitsubishi Evo VI on display as well as three gravel courses – slalom, skid-pad and figure-eight. Each course had instructors, seasoned rallyists like Mark Nelson and Lauchlin O’Sullivan, whom would jump in your car and coach you through the obstacles. I learned more than would ever imagine, even though I never got out of first gear. Lauchlin was awesome – his enthusiasm was infectious, and it was so great to have a someone of his caliber in MY car telling me what to do! The class was only $180, and I highly recommend it. The second day at the RallyCross my scores improved to the top ten in my class.

2002 The Road Not Taken Rally Cont.

From the navvie seat of Jon's WRX

2002 The Road Not Taken Rally

Later in the summer of ’02, I attend the third event in the i-Club Rally series, a map style Monte Carlo rally. This time, I’m navvie for my buddy Jon. With some luck, we take first place. At the bar after the event the organizers, Pete and Lee, have a talk with Jon and I and convince us to go up to Oregon in August and compete in The Road Not Taken SCCA touring rally. It’ll be a all day affair, on dirt logging roads west of Salem. Jon and I take the challenge, and I agree to navvie. We drive up all day Friday, meet up with the rest of the competitors at the Rally HQ. Some 40+ cars show up, including four curious newbies from the SF Bay Area. Pete and Lee give us some tips, and off we go. Granted this was more gravel driving than either of had ever done, it could have been the Dakar Rally to us. The 250 mile event kept us on our toes, with lots of very narrow and twisty roads up and over all sorts of mountains. Since we are running dead last in the run-order, we end up finishing well after dark around 9pm, long after the winners (Lee and his brother Rod) had have showers and drink or two. We were totally exhausted. The drive home had us both nodding off on the way to our hotel in Salem. The event was awesome, and hooked us both on gravel rallies.

More Dirty fun at Thunderhill