Tall Pines Writeup

[Piotrov]

This is a little wirteup of the event from my point of view :D

Firs of I would love to thank Mark and Christine for letting me stay at their place and being great hosts.

Mark also thanks for the spare. Ill give it back to ya soon :D

Les! Thanks For your help too.

The Tall pines rally was a lot of fun. It was snowing all day which made is not so cold. We skipped the first two stages because there was no point since the cars were coming back for service. After service we went out to the next stage and found a nice cozy spot on a hill beside two jumps. That meant a 3 quarter km walk and we had to park our cars in a very awkward spot :D

http://media.c7performance.com/pictures/Motorsports/2005/Rally%20of%20the%20Tall%20Pines/_res/res_P1020518ss.jpg


At the spot I planted myself across the other side from where the rest of the guys were. I was on a bunch of rocks which were cool till I fell off :giggle: Good thing no one caught it on camera :lol:

The cars started running and we got to see a lot of action. Just further down the road turned to the left and in front was a bit of a run off.

A few cars actually missed the turn and went off. One of them in spectacular style was the Sprongle’s in their yellow Suzuki. The went off and into a tree almost. Good for them the tree had a small bank. Les and the rest of the guys were on their heels ready to help till the Suzuki jumped into reverse and pulled out into the course and continued on its course!

Later on the Toyota GT4 in the same place went out and hit a stump on the side but kept going.

This is a pic of where the cars went off. Sorry no actual pics of the cars going off. We were too busy gawking. :P

http://media.c7performance.com/pictures/Motorsports/2005/Rally%20of%20the%20Tall%20Pines/_res/res_P1020515ss.jpg

The day was all in all great! One of the spectator stages I was not too impressed with but the night stage even tho it was about 1 km walk was very impressive. But way too many crowds packed into too small of an area. Oh well what can ya do :D

Matt - really sorry I did not get any good shots of your car in action. I just never got the cam in hand when your car drove by. Lol My hands were freezing. But Congratulations on your awesome finish!

Had a really great time if you don’t include my off which is outlined in another post :D

Here is the rest of the pics I got. Im sure Les got some as well.


http://media.c7performance.com/index.php?folder=/Motorsports/2005/Rally%20of%20the%20Tall%20Pines/

[wedge]

Thanks for the kind words. But we didn't do as well as we hoped.

About 1km into the first stage, we had a sudden loss in horsepower, and a strange misfiring sound. I thought we'd lost a cylinder. We stopped and I checked to see if a plug wire had come loose or something. I couldn't see anything wrong, so we got back in the car and just kept going. The power seemed to come back a bit after that. But I didn't know what was wrong, so I wasn't pushing the engine hard.
Because we stopped there, we lost about 5 minutes, and we were dead last after the very first stage. Not a promising start.

We never really did figure out what the problem was. But our oil burning kept getting worse through the whole event. We just kept adding oil.
I really wanted to finish, so I was driving easy ALL day. I shifted early, and was almost never at 100% throttle. Since, I couldn't floor it, and was running on 3.5 cylinders, I obviously couldn't win anything on horsepower. So I tried to be on the limit for almost every corner. I knew the attrition rate would be high, so I made sure to do my best so we could take advantage of any time loss of any of our competition.

The plan worked. Even with a hurt engine I was able to go as fast, or faster, than most of the other 2wd cars, and we gradually moved up the board throughout the day. Plus, with all the DNF's we finally ended up in 14th overall. Which was our primary goal. I wanted to be in the top 15, because that now moves us up to seed 5A. Which will give us a better start position from now on.

Everybody that I've spoken to, says that I was very smooth. Well, it's easy to be that smooth when you're going so slowly... But, we ended up where we wanted to, so I can't really complain about the engine problems. I'm sure that helped keep me stay on the road on a few occations. Besides, there was a big time gap between us and the cars ahead of us at the end. Even if we had been at full power, the best I could have done would be 13th, instead of 14th.

I'm particularly proud of our performance on the night stages. It was dark then, which slowed a few people down, it was also much colder, so there were alot of icy sections. But our times for those stages were MUCH faster, relative to everybody else, than we had been all day.

So that was our first year in performance rallying. 3 rallies, 3 different mechanical problems. We will be back in action next year. And hopefully we will be able to keep the car together and make it faster than ever. I'd like to show people that I'm actually fast, not just smooth. That's why I'll be moving up to Group 2. With a faster car, I won't be limited simply by horsepower anymore.

[Piotrov]

Great Writeup Matt! You were smooth and even seemed faster then some of the other cars before you. No doubt you have accomplished alot this year being your first year at Rally. Great Job :2thumb: No doubt that next year you will do even better!

[wedge]

Anybody got any action shots of me?
This is the only one I've been able to find so far:

http://x11.putfile.com/11/33109061459-thumb.jpg (http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=11/33109061459.jpg&s=x11)

[wedge]

Hey, I've found a bunch of really good pics of us:

http://www.torontopaseoclub.com/matt/tallpines-11-26-05/cars-2005-tp-mt-0184.jpg

http://www.torontopaseoclub.com/matt/tallpines-11-26-05/res67361963.jpg

See more here: http://www.torontopaseoclub.com/matt/tallpines-11-26-05/

[subterfuge]

Very nice!!! :thumbup:

[Piotrov]

Sweet shots man!! way better then what i could have done :D
Keep em coming if you find anymore :thumbup: