Tuesday, September 14, 2004
They Said it Wouldn't Be Easy...
Well we had a great day yesterday in our first full day of driving. It was the Prologue Day which is essentially a practice day to establish seedings. We had a lot of fun and learned a little more as well. The car handled great.
We also met some more helpful people who gave us tips on how this thing really works. We have also launched our first "Inquiry" with the event stewards. An inquiry is essentially an informal "protest". To make a long story short they classified our vehicle as a "modified" vehicle, which means competing at a much higher level with other modified vehicles. Basically bullsh**. This car couldn't be more stock. With the very persuasive arguments of Peter it looks like we may have succeeded. That's the good news. The bad news is that we are writing this from the back of our support vehicle as we drive to Clarenville. We had a little mishap on the fifth special stage of the day. We had been smokin the competition. We "cleaned" all of our stages and beat all "targa times". These times are set each day and in order to "win", you must beat these times. We passed several competitors on various stages and we were not anywhere near to our limits.
On a 180 degree corner, we setup and executed a perfect hand brake turn, put it in gear and no movement! The rear end differential "blew-up", basically breaking off all of the gears. We had to wait in the middle of the course for the rest of the competitors to pass (we had started fifth). A tow truck picked us up and proceeded to take us back to St. John's for help. After many phone calls and trouble shooting, we decided to have the unit welded soldid found a great welding shop (H&H Auto). Mark from H&H,(who's mom towed us in) did a great job. Dave from TJ's Auto stayed until 8pm to finish the job.
So here we are from competing to sitting on the sidelines with no alternatives, to figuring out a solution, executing and now travelling back to Clarenville to continue the race tomorrow morning. We dropped the afternoon but we are back in the race.
We also met some more helpful people who gave us tips on how this thing really works. We have also launched our first "Inquiry" with the event stewards. An inquiry is essentially an informal "protest". To make a long story short they classified our vehicle as a "modified" vehicle, which means competing at a much higher level with other modified vehicles. Basically bullsh**. This car couldn't be more stock. With the very persuasive arguments of Peter it looks like we may have succeeded. That's the good news. The bad news is that we are writing this from the back of our support vehicle as we drive to Clarenville. We had a little mishap on the fifth special stage of the day. We had been smokin the competition. We "cleaned" all of our stages and beat all "targa times". These times are set each day and in order to "win", you must beat these times. We passed several competitors on various stages and we were not anywhere near to our limits.
On a 180 degree corner, we setup and executed a perfect hand brake turn, put it in gear and no movement! The rear end differential "blew-up", basically breaking off all of the gears. We had to wait in the middle of the course for the rest of the competitors to pass (we had started fifth). A tow truck picked us up and proceeded to take us back to St. John's for help. After many phone calls and trouble shooting, we decided to have the unit welded soldid found a great welding shop (H&H Auto). Mark from H&H,(who's mom towed us in) did a great job. Dave from TJ's Auto stayed until 8pm to finish the job.
So here we are from competing to sitting on the sidelines with no alternatives, to figuring out a solution, executing and now travelling back to Clarenville to continue the race tomorrow morning. We dropped the afternoon but we are back in the race.
