2022 100 Acre Wood Rally
- unamusedrallysport
- Mar 27, 2022
- 4 min read
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The car went through some major changes leading up to the rally this year with no room for error. New wing designed and built from scratch, front splitter, and new mirrors all in an effort to improve the aerodynamics of our #impreza #wagon. The changes accompanied with a brand new engine would surely make for an exciting rally. The engine was broken in and dyno'd the weekend prior, while the wing was not finished and mounted until Monday night (there might be some fingerprints in the paint as a result). Lots of effort was put into this year's "package" that would hopefully pay off.
We got into town Wednesday night and settled in so we could be mentally prepared for a full day of Recce on Thursday. This is another event where we would write our own notes. During Recce, the roads looked awesome! Minor dust but the roads overall were smooth and fast. We consider the choices this year as our favorite combination. Pigeon Roost, Floyd Tower, Scotia are all great. Southern Loop looked to be a car killer, as always, and claimed several recce vehicles' tires due to punctures. Luckily, we made it through 2 passes of each stage without any trouble. Rally Safe Lite was used to track speed, but the app seems to need some work as many competitors noted glitching issues, while we frequently saw our reported speeds fluctuating by as much as 10mph back and forth. While we were out, the car passed tech without a hiccup. We had been keeping an eye on the weather for a few weeks leading up to the event. Rain was forecasted for that weekend, but how right could they be so far in advance? Pretty right!
Friday morning, the skies opened and it poured for almost the entire morning. Having basically no experience racing in the wet, we were a little nervous and we planning to take it slow. Parc Expose was in downtown #Potosi , which was an awesome change compared to the field that it was normally held in. By the time stage 1 came around, the rain was letting up with only spotty showers the rest of the day. From just a few corners in, we got our confidence back in the tricky conditions and hammered down putting over a minute on the rest of the class after the first loop of 3 stages. The car felt amazing and planted like never before allowing us to push harder than we ever have. After an uneventful service of checking the oil, cleaning out the wheels, and putting the lights on, we would do the same loop of stages again to finish the day first in class and 3rd overall regionally.
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As we were towing back to #salem that night, we got word that we had received a penalty. Not a small penalty... A whopping 1 minute penalty. This was supposedly for skipping a "virtual chicane", which is a feature of Rally Safe where there is a zone that we must slow the car down to below a target speed, the unit acknowledges the target speed has been met, then we can take off again. We had every one of these marked in our notes and they were obviously marked on the stage. We slowed down for each one and we both saw Rally Safe confirm the speed and turn green. Each time we entered the zone, we would slam on the brakes and downshift into second gear. The reported lowest speed that we achieved for the penalty was higher than our 2nd gear is even capable of at redline. This feature seems like it has a bugs still since there were multiple teams that received penalties and/or had issues with this. Luckily, this ended up causing no bearing on our overall result!
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The next morning was Parc Expose in downtown Salem. It was great to have spectators back! This day would have some unknowns in it since we recce'd the roads when they were dry and it had rained significantly since. A few of the stages had multiple dips and water crossings that could have swelled since. We were hoping that our lead from Friday would allow us to tip toe through Southern Loop on the first pass and adjust our notes accordingly. Luckily, it wasn't that bad and we were making great time until the famous water splash crossing. We easily lost 20-30sec after this as the car stuttered and coughed for the entire straight after and multiple subsequent turns, forcing us into first gear just to keep the car from stalling. Once, everything cleared up, we were able to press on at speed. The second running of this stage would get cancelled due to time constraints. The remaining stages were good and we held our position throughout the day. On the second last stage we overcame the regional competitors in front of us due to a mechanical issue. They hit some heavily eroded bedrock mid-hairpin which caused a suspension failure. We heard a loud thump going through the same section but luckily did not suffer any complications. The final stage ended in the night for us without any trouble. We finished the rally 1st in NA4WD and 2nd Overall in Regional. Couldn't be happier!
This rally experienced several wildlife incidents and a few accidents further back in the pack so we were very fortunate not to experience the same fate. Overall it was a great rally for us and we are looking forward to the Missouri Ozark Rally as our next event. We will be working on a few more upgrades to the car to be able to better handle our deficiencies from this rally such as a good go-pro and better protection from the water crossings.
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Thank you to everyone that has either helped us get here or helped us at the rally. Thanks to Cooper Autoworks for taking our car through tech and live streaming the rally, thanks to Misha Avrushenko for the use of Recce Riccardo, and thank you to our sponsors:
J-Spec Auto Sports Inc.
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Lastly, thank you to the organizers and volunteers! Without you, we wouldn't be able to keep doing what we doing.
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Photos by James Hill, Rob Benowitz, ARA, and us.
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