Today was the first day of competitive rallying on the 2004 Forza Ameila.
But first, let me get you caught up to this morning:
Last night we had a kick-off/welcome dinner at the Amelia Island Plantation. The food was wonderful and it was great to see old familiar faces as well as meet new friends.
Morning started (way too early!) with a spectacular sunrise:
We ate a swift breakfast and I was the first down to the parking lot to prep the car. I managed to get a few photos in the quiet before the storm:
Soon the lot was buzzing with vintage rallyists, and by some miracle, Dad and I were ready first. It must be this car, which as I keep telling Dad, is TOO EASY to rally. =)
We checkout and head down the road with me at the wheel for the first segment. I don't recall much about this one as it was pretty uneventful. IIRC it was about 79 miles. I did sort of lounge about for the first part, but after the Healey driven by Ralf Berthier appeared in my rear-view mirror I turned up the V-8 and flew a bit. The checkpoint was located in a Fireworks store's parking lot. I arrived with plenty of time to spare and was able to grab some nice photos.
We swapped seats, and Dad zeroed the checkpoint (whoo hoo! Always nice to start the rally with no penalties) and got our checkout time and left. The next stop was the Gainesville racetrack. Dad drove this segment and again, it was uneventful. We made it to Gainesville in such good time that the checkpoint wasn't even set up when we arrived... this gave Dad a chance to take care of some other business...
We followed the checkpoint staff back to where the checkpoint would be(!.. yeah these rallies are pretty relaxed.) We lined up and prepped for our final run.
The Berthier big Healey was behind us, and we were ready for the second checkpoint...
Then our "Rally Luck" took over... I didn't get any pictures of it, but using the above photo I can illustrate. Our final minute ticked down, and as I did my navigator's duty of calling out the final 30 seconds, a Golf Cart from the Racetrack puttered up from the left and rolled ahead of us. Now the final 10 seconds were counting down and we were rolling past the final cone... in the zone of no return... we CAN NOT STOP, least we get penalized 500 points for stopping in the final run zone. The golf cart putters to a stop RIGHT IN THE CHECKPOINT... in fact RIGHT ON THE "FINISH LINE"!! I am committed to announcing the countdown to our check-in time... slowly counting up seconds from 50... "54"... "55"..."56"... etc. I really can't stop what I am doing. Dad is about to have a heart attack and is waving his free arm around and screaming at the top of his lungs "GET OUT OF THE WAY!... GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!!" I am thinking "you have a horn... USE IT!" but I can't really interrupt my countdown to do so.
Thankfully the Rally Staff (Bless you Wayne!) shooed the moron in the golf cart away as the final three seconds arrived. By some miracle Dad kept the car moving forward and never had to resort to actually stopping, but also crept across the line at the exact Zero moment. Somehow we snatched victory (at least in this segment) from the jaws of defeat, and pulled off another zero.
whew...
It is late, and I am tired, so I will cop out on image editing for the track events. Instead, have a look at this gallery.
To make a long story short, we did pretty well on the track... despite driving a lead sled with a slush box. Sure the 450sl was really designed to take wealthy ladies to exquisite dinners, but it moves pretty good when you approach the outside of the envelope. =)
I actually danced along the edge of the envelope once, sliding through a corner with a flip of the fish tail. Once I knew where the tires would give, I stayed just inside that line and managed to pull top-five times on both tracks. In fact I executed a perfect drift through one hairpin! There was a new 2002 ferrari barchetta on the track that was beating everyone by 2 seconds, but I managed to stay right in the pack with the Corvettes and even the Porsches! Go figure. All I can guess is that I had no fear, unlike the owners of these pricey cars. This SL isn't mine, but I know that for Dad it is just a "driver" and a pretty well-built one at that. Maybe that lack of fear let me push it just hard enough. I know if these guys were pushing their cars as hard we'd have been toast. The 450sl comes off the line like a grown man on a toddlers tricycle.... slow and ungainly. Probably due to the sedate slushbox automatic tranny. Once it gets moving, it feels great. The suspension is stellar and once I got the feel for the cornering it was quite fun!
Lunch was great... we ate in a tent on a field adjacent to the track, and enjoyed a nice BBQ seafood buffet. I drank about a gallon of ice tea in an effort to cool down. It was getting hot. After I wolfed down my lunch I ran out to grab some shots of the cars lined up on the grass:
I drove the next segment, and it passed uneventfully until the end. When we arrived at the checkpoint, a small riverside park, it started to rain. We had a few minutes to spare, so we put the top up. We then switched drivers, as Dad was doing the next segment, and about 90 seconds before our check-in time my comapny's CEO called... I took the call, but managed to hang up with only about 20 seconds to spare. Thankfully we managed to zero.
Dad drove the last segment of the day. We left the top up, as the light rain continued. This segment was kind of tough... the first part was convoluted and on somewhat crowded roads. Dad was freaked and worried that we wouldn't be able to make up for lost time later. Sure enough, as we were leaving the crowded parts Dad was starting to speed up when I yelled "COP!"... on the left, in some bushes was a police cruiser. It was a country Sheriff. Dad slowed, and to our chagrin he pulled out and followed us. He never stopped us, but he tailed us for about 12 miles.
Needless to say, it put a crimp in our "catch up" plans. Thankfully he finally went straight when our route went right. Then, we had a nice straight stretch of long, straight, and most importantly, EMPTY, road. We made some time. Navigation was minimal, so I took pictures:
We arrived at the checkpoint... which was on a short stretch of dirt road behind a gas station... and just before our final run, an 18-wheeler pulls through the route. We were very nervous, fully expecting it to stop and park there for who know how long!
Thankfully it left, leaving us plenty of time to proceed on schedule. We zeroed. In fact, I caught the moment on camera when our nose crossed the line, with the navigator's clock in view:
Your margin for error is one full second. It sounds like an easy thing to do: get your bumper over a line within a full second of one particular minute... but it is actually quite tough. Then to do it over and over again for a week. That is really tough. My Dad and I have been rallying for many years, and we have Zero'ed more often than not, but *something* always screws us up somewhere. We expect to do our best, but have no illusions that we can stay perfect all week. Thankfully this particular rally has only 8 time-speed-distance segments, so maybe we'll find that magic combo of luck and skill!
Happy to finish the day with no penalty points, we ran a transit stage to Lakeland, to attend a mini-concours sponsored by Parrish-Heacock, a classic car insurer. It was raining, so rather than do it in a park as scheduled, it happened in a garage:
It was fun, even though it wasn't outdoors. Huge thanks to the Parrish-Heacock folks for pulling it off under less-than-perfect weather conditions!
Dinner was spectacular as well, at the Terrace Hotel. Although all during dinner it rained... wait, "rain" is not an adequate term... we experienced a deluge, a veritable torrent of precipitation. This does not bode well for tomorrow.
I didn't have Internet access, so I couldn't upload any stuff from Monday, sorry.