The Barefoot Racing Team was in short form this year at Sno*Drift, the first event of the 2007 Rally America. Life and work kept all but Paul and the car home for the weekend. So, we supplemented the team with Carl Seidel co-driving and Josh as crew chief. We left Thursday morning after stopping by Rhythms skate shop in Houghton to pick up our new shirts and a decal from the Keweenaw Brewing Company, our newest addition to the team!
We arrived in Atlanta, Michigan, around 6pm ready to check in and head to the tech inspection. Everything was smooth except for a loose seat mounting bolt that needed to be attended too and the lack of event stickers were never received. After a bit of tinkering we passed and were on our way to Lewiston to get some rest and ready for Friday’s race.
Friday morning we were up early and out to the practice stage to get our feel for the roads and get Carl familiarized with stage notes. This event was Carl’s first time reading notes and everything went great.
Parc Expose began in early afternoon on the streets of downtown Lewiston where the rally would finally begin around 3 pm. This is when things began to get hair. We never had received the event stickers and finally decided to ask one of the stewards if they could rustle up a few. Instead of a sticker we landed ourselves on the verge of DNF’ing the event before it even started. We scrambled for the next hour searching for JB in hopes he would allow us to run without the stickers. Finally, JB was found and he wrote us a letter exempting us from the sticker rule until service, and 5th period, and allowing us to run. Thanks JB! Soon after Dave Parps let us his stickers and everything was taken care of and nerves could settle.
The first stage was a good one. We came out flying and pushing the car hard. Every few corners we were over rotating and hitting snow banks. However, it was a sponsored stage that would award $100 to the fastest 2wd car … congratulations to Chris Duplessis, but only by 8 seconds.
We hit the second stage with the same vengeance as the first but our luck could not hold out. During a “right 4 into a left 2” we decided to park the golf on top of a four foot burm and almost roll! Carl had a hard time trying to get out because his door was hitting the ground! However, with some much appreciated help from some photographers and corner workers we were pulled free and continued, loosing only 4 minutes to the incident. I clamed myself down and decided to take it easy the rest of the night. No need to brake the car when we’re already 4 minutes down and we have the national championship next month in Missouri. At the end of the stage we checked the car over for damage and saw nothing major. We opened the hood and for a second everything looked great until a sharp ‘pop’ and fluid sprayed all over. Under further inspection, one of our struts let go and shot the adjustment rod out releasing all the fluid and pressure. Later that night we found out the other side was loosing pressure as well. However, I could not tell the difference in handling so we just left the blown struts in and drove on the springs… it went pretty well.
The rest of the night was pretty typical, a spin hear and there and some slight snow banks taps but rather uneventful. Until the ranch. The ranch is a very tight and twisty section of two-tack through private property. I had never run this stage but had heard much about its intensity. We went in strong but missed one junction because the tape was down, loosing about 30 seconds. Then we nearly missed the very next junction due to missing tape, loosing another 20 seconds or more. Apparently people had been blowing through the junctions early and messing all kinds of stuff up.
Day two began in Atlanta early in the morning with a drivers meeting and service set up. Everything went smooth all day. We took it easy and stayed out of the snow banks. We lost site of Moen and Duplessis early so there was no real pressure to try and catch them.
Stage 13, the long 25 miler, was canceled for reasons involving snowmobiles trying to race Travis… ridiculous. Therefore, we had to transit the stage at reasonable speeds. Heading down the stage at 30 mph seemed like it was slow enough but still we were getting sideways, hitting banks, and blowing tight stuff. I can’t believe some of the roads we race down! At speed they don’t seem that crazy but under close inspection, WOW! I think Carl and I laughed the entire way.
The last stage of Sno*Drift was my favorite all weekend. Thunder River is a tight but very flowing and fast stage with lots of variation. We decided to push and see with we could match Moen or Duplessis times. We were flying with big drifts and late braking zones. A couple of times I thought it was all over as we began fish-tailing wildly under braking. In the end we bested Moen by 13 seconds but were still 20 back on Duplessis.
On the way back to final control and the actual finish I began to notice the steering was getting real stiff. As we pulled into our stall next to all the other finishing cars we discovered that the steering rack had given out. Straight was about all you could get out of the car. We were extremely lucky that didn’t let go on stage, we could have had a real bad off and/or wrecked the car.
All and all the 2007 Sno*Drift Rally was a success for Barefoot Racing. Two third place finishes and a few broken parts, how can we complain? I would like to thank Carl Seidel and Josh for taking the long trip with me. Carl did an exceptional job with the stage notes calling almost perfectly all weekend. Josh ran the services perfectly as well, having everything done and ready to go before I could settle down from the stages. Thanks also to Paul, Dick, and Dave at Keweenaw Brewing Company, Doug at DavenportRacingUSA.com, and Cole at Steinke Storage and Auto Body for your support.
~Paul Koll