On Sunday, April 11th 2010 I experienced my first rally cross. After almost a two hour drive, we made it to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds where the rain was pouring down. Mary Ann and I spent a few confused minutes walking around the course where tracks from the previous day didn’t *quite* line up with today’s course. After that, we came back to the car to find someone looking at the tires and after talking to them, discovered that not only did he have an STI but that he had been doing the rally school the day before. And that he had made a mess of his bumper, pulled out a wheel lining and lost a mud flap. At that point, I almost backed out in fright of doing damage to the car.
Mary Ann told me to man up and so I registered to drive. Of course, she didn’t follow her own advice and chickened out of driving. I had a blast, as someone at the rally said, it was the most fun I’ve ever had driving at 18 miles per hour. It was slow, slippery, dirty and the mud was deep. The STI’s AWD and Blizzak snow tires were amazing, I think the car just absolutely loved the mud.
Parade Lap
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AcZWuCzzp4[/youtube]
This is the parade lap, which I was very thankful they did. It let me drive the course slowly, following a bunch of people who seemed to already know the course and what they were doing. We also discussed the course a little bit as I drove. You can see 3 more videos after the jump, but I didn’t want to clutter the front page with all of them.
Lap 1
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLMynRcP-IU[/youtube]
On my first lap, I was alone. I mostly just tried to stay on course and go moderately fast.
Lap 2
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfAP9Qx71M[/youtube]
On the second, I felt like I was going faster but turned in a barely slower time.
Lap 3
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sKR74hpSAc[/youtube]
This is probably the most interesting lap because Mary Ann got to ride with me and you can hear her squeak a few times. We also talk about the course a little bit, like we did on the parade lap.