Culture|Garage

Pictures courtesy of Ryan (no not the Ryan that makes our site look cool)

Yesterday marked the first rallyx event of the season for the Land O’Lakes SCCA club. The event was relocated to another smaller venue due to ground conditions. This was a much smaller course, but it allowed for eight runs.

The beginning of the day started out bad for me. In autox, I have always been told to make my first run the most balls out run of the day… and then dial back from there, because your fastest time of the day is all that matters. With rallyx, I forgot that it is your quickest time per heat that is then added together…oops.

The powdercoaters didn’t have my wheels ready so I ran on all seasons (rather than competition rally tires), which was ultimate fail given the conditions. Then I ran out of gas. Oops. Then I lost the fender liner.

After lunch, I chilled out and stopped cussing. This allowed me to drop my times over 20 seconds. Yes, 20 seconds. And run all but one run clean (no cones).

In the end, I still had a blast, but showed poorly.

Keep going post jump for more details on the day

[view slideshow]

Invariably, slow and steady was a much better route to take. The grass and dirt was extremely slimey and very difficult to get going on. Most everyone was plowing and understeering into the turns vs the typical rallyx where you can induce oversteer going into the turns.

We had a solid group of Saab guys (read: the c|g 24 Hours of Lemons team), for some it was their first… and I can confidently say that they are hooked.

Most people (namely, Jim) will get excited about the “truck.” Ok, yeah that thing has a ridiculous amount of power, it has a worked over vette motor and is great at creating mud wakes and ruts that cause the course to be changed.

At the end of the day the top car was an ice-race modified 2.5rs (with who knows what all was done to it) and a Suzuki Swift.

The next one will be coming in another month or so. Yeah!

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