Larson/Cox Take 1999 Headwaters ClubRally Class Win
The 1999 Headwaters pro rally (now called ClubRally) was held Saturday, May 15 in Park Rapids, MN. This was my fourth event in the Talon and I was pretty excited. My first event last fall had ended with a stuck thermostat causing overheating and a warped cylinder head. In March, I ran two events in Texas, winning the GT class on the first and leading on the second when I hit a deer. It took out everything from the air cleaner forward and it took me a month of weekends to fix and repaint it. We went back to the carbon kevlar brakes for Headwaters, because they don't conduct heat as well as the metallics, so they don't boil the brake fluid as bad. The logging roads require a lot of left-foot braking and I've had trouble with the metallic pads boiling the fluid. Besides, the metallic pads rip up the rotors and I hate replacing them all the time. It rained a lot in Minnesota during the last week, so the roads were pretty well packed and had standing water in places. Dust was no problem. We were starting 6th out of 32, so we would get the roads in pretty good shape.
The first stage started twisty and hilly, then straightened out and got really fast. I didn't feel very fast in the twisty stuff, because I'm not as good with the left-foot braking as I was in my front wheel drive car, but I was fast enough for 2nd in GT and 5th overall. It got a little hairy in a few spots where the first cars had loosened up the top layer of gravel, revealing the slippery stuff underneath. The four wheel drive really helped us stay on the road in some of those places. We moved up to 3rd overall on the second stage due to some other people's misfortune. Mark Utecht had his radiator punctured by flying gravel when he was passed on stage 1 by the awesome Mitsubishi Evolution of Bill Morton. He tried to nurse the car to service after stage 2, but could not make it. Steve Gingras also overheated his Open class Eclipse, probably due to his new oversized turbo. He was able to get it cooled down and continue after 25 minutes.
After 4 stages, we were 3rd overall and 2nd in GT by .30 minutes (18 seconds) behind Chris Czyzio in his Eclipse. I told my co-driver Kelly, running her first event, that we could drive to finish and take a sure third, or go all-out and try to catch Chris. Kelly said, "I think we should go for it." I avoided Chris during the break, because I did not want to psyche him or myself. Chris forgot to turn the boost up at the start of the stage, but I don't think that would have mattered, because it was the best stage I ever drove. I made one mistake, where we slid the rear wheels through the ditch for a while, banging up the rocker panel, but not hitting any trees! Otherwise, we were really on the mark. I was a lot more confident with my left-foot breaking at that point and really worked the brakes hard. I almost shifted into 4th gear at one point (about 85 mph), but chickened out because the fog was just too thick. We even nailed the spectator corner where I had kind of blown it on stage 1. We ended up beating Chris by over a minute on stage 5 and added another half minute on stage 6, winning Production GT and finishing 2nd overall behind Bill in the Evo. Chris was 3rd and Steve finished 21st, even with the 25 minute delay. Steve won 2 stages outright and was 2nd on the other three where he did not overheat. Bill won the other 4 stages. Special thanks to our crew chief Gary Starr who rebuilt both front axles for us before the event. |
