 |
 Just outside Quesnel, Canada, waiting to start our second TSD stage. |
 Dennis
Gage of the handlebar mustache is the on-air personality in the video
for SpeedVision. |
 Excellent so far. Magnificent breakfast at the rally hotel. |
 Oh man, the WRX is great. It is a little rocket. |
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| DAY 1: Beautiful Start, Beautiful Country... |
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 Car 3 is a sleek Subaru WRX Sport Wagon. Good drives by Pete Soper / Dave Dennison have put it in a solid third place. |
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"Good luck! Watch your back..." The irrepressible Judy Misbach in the Acura MDX, Car 6 |
After
a beautiful day dawned in Kirkland, and the crowd ooohed and aaahed as
the rally cars and motorcycles left rallystart at Carillon Point, and
after we were well down the transit to the first special stage, trouble
came to Car 1, singing a happy little tune. But more about that later.
As Car 1, we were first on the road. The way the rally works, you drive
out to the start of a special stage. The organizers give you the route
and sufficient time to get there. You can't dawdle, though, and if you
get temporarily lost or delayed by traffic, you take penalty points (lots
of them).So R.Dale
keeps the Subaru WRX moving right along. "Wow," Larry said after
R.Dale seized an opportunity to pass a log truck on a winding bit of two-lane.
"The acceleration is really solid, isn't it?"I
verified that myself when I drove the transit through the spectacular
Fraser River canyon. We had delayed a while in the town of Hope, and needed
to maintain at least a 50 mph average over the 250-mile transit. Many,
many trucks and Winnebagos attempted to delay the WRX, and failed. |
Our first TSD stage went really well. I have done seat-of-the-pants
(SOP) rallying before, and I have co-driven many pro-rallies, but competing
in a TSD rally with unlimited nav equipment (i.e., all-out rally computers)
- well, now that is something else. As a team, we are striving for thousandth-of-a-mile
and thousandth-of-a-minute precision. You focus on constantly recalibrating
and readjusting the car's speed so that you cross in front of each checkpoint
at exactly the second you should. Oops - more on this later - it's time
gotta go |
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