Team Somepants Scores Big in California
After a disappointing start to 2004, including a ditch-excursion in Canada at Thunderbird and a missed turn at Coast to Coast (Vancouver Island), Team Somepants finally got on the podium at a TSD rally event. With a score of 102 after two days of rallying in the hot California sun, J. McMillen and M. Crippen finished first in limited class and second overall at the maiden* running of the Golden West rally. Although coming into day two trailing first overall by two points, a dust altercation at the beginning of day two cost Team Somepants 10 points and the realistic run for first overall which was taken by Jason Webster and Brandon Harer of Portland, oregon, with 74 points. Full results will be available on the Golden West web site shortly.
Despite the rough first regularity of the rally, Golden West did not turn out to be a rally of attrition. There were a few blown tires, one retirement due to mechanicals (broken exhaust hangers, then flat tire, then blown transmission, but the owner of the Porsche 944 in question left with a huge smile on his face) and one retirement by choice. The rest of the field soldiered on through 16 hours of gravel, dust, rocks, and heat to finish at the end of Sunday.
Difficult Rally Format Suits Team
The format for Golden west was somewhat controversial, with a few competitors refusing to enter due to their dislike of the Colorado Monte Carlo** style of route instructions and scoring and at least one team coming specifically because they enjoy that format.
Team Somepants, after some small experimentation with different strategies to run the rally, decided to calculate casts for the regularities based on the time and distance between the marked passage controls. This allowed them to effectively use their calibrated odometer while running the rally in a manner similar to the standard TSDs they are accustomed to running. This stragegy proved very effective and the key to their good result in this event.
PCC Title Back in Sight
After two of the four Pacific Coast Challenge (PCC) rallys in the 2004 calendar, Team Somepants, the defending champions of the series, lie in second with 12 points, trailing the team of Phil Wild and Glyn Trafford of British Columbia who lead by two points with 14.
"It feels good to grab a first place at this event after coming away from Coast to Coast with only 2 points" said driver J. McMillen. "After our disaster in the first event of PCC this year, we were a bit concerned about our chances of sucessfully defending our PCC championship of last year. Now that we are back in the running and only two points behind, things are looking much better."
The final two events on this year's PCC calendar are Night On Bald Mountain and Totem. Although Team Somepants have notoriously bad luck in Canadian rallys, failing to place higher than third in all of the ones they have run so far, Night On Bald Mountain has treated them better, with driver J. McMillen winning class last year with novice navigator D. Carroll. Anything can happen in the second half of the season but Team Somepants are in a good position and ready to fight for a second championship.
--Seattle, WA
* Maiden is not strictly correct. There have been earlier incarnations of the Golden West rally in the 50's and 60's. Rallymaster Pete Soper even found photos of the rally in an old rally handbook from that era and ran the competitors on a few of the same roads on day 2. But as the rally has not been run on these roads or with that name in quite a while, I feel comfortable using the term as the new rally is a different beast than the old rally.
** Colorado Monte Carlo rules differ from the more common TSD format in that no casts are given in the route instructions. Multiple passage controls per reguarity are marked with a car zero time and mileage but not all of them are scored. in this rally, the majority of the controls were unmanned, or phantom controls. Teams were faced with two different strategies; move quickly to near then control and then time their departure to pass the control on time or calculate casts between the controls and run the rally as a TSD style event.