It’s 5:30 AM and we awake to the familiar guitar hymn on the iPhone. It’s race day. I can’t believe it’s here. We spent the last thirteen months emptying bank accounts, maxing credit cards, and spending countless hours taking apart and putting back together the car that used to be my daily driver for five years. Today, she sits looking quite differently than when I first spotted her on the showroom floor.

I’ve never done a rally before, not even a rallycross. The only legitimate seat time I’ve had was lift-turn-brake-gasing at Team O’Neil Rally School five months ago. Hopefully I paid enough attention. My girlfriend and codriver was even worse off. I bought her “North American Performance Rally Codriving” by Dave Shindle two weeks before the race and said, “read this.” Add this to the fact that we’re racing an open class, turbo fed, all wheel drive monster, and you’ll hear the old guys saying it’s a recipe for disaster. Just an hour before start time and I’m starting to think they’re right.

We do last minute checks on the car; adjusting tire pressures, making sure the computer is calibrated, and checking that the intercom works. The motorcycles that are racing in the RallyMoto portion are taking off one by one. The anticipation builds. We don our factory fresh blue race suits and stick out like sore thumbs. Everyone else has dirt, oil, and experience all over their race attire. I start to wonder if I should have stuck to building cars instead of racing them.

Being the new kids, we’re seeded 18th, just three ahead of the back of the pack. The car seeded 17th pulls in line and we follow suit. They take off and we pull to the start line on our minute. A quick thumbs up from Anders, a countdown from Amy, and we’re on our way. Lucky for us it’s just the transit to the first stage. Traveling the speed limit and following the route book is all we needed to do. I took the time to get used to the sound of the engine, hearing directions being called on the intercom, and the feeling of being strapped in with a helmet and a neck restraint keeping my head from straying too far from neutral. I’ve driven the car before since we finished building it but everything felt different, almost like it wasn’t real and was just a dream. The start was just ahead.

We had a couple minutes and I took the opportunity to relieve myself for the fifth time that morning. At this point I had given up any and all aspirations to do well in the rally. I just wanted us to live, finish, and still have something that resembled a car at the end of the day.
The cars started taking off and I inched closer and closer to the start of Special Stage 1. “Finish the rally, finish the rally, finish the rally.” That’s all I had to do. “30 seconds.” Maybe I should have done some rallycross first. “10 seconds.” This was a bad idea. “5.” How long is this? “4.” Just drive right? “3.” Should I rev up? “2.” Wait, wait! “1.” Too late… “Go!” And suddenly I had four wheels spinning out of the start. “Left four over small crest 70,” I hear inside my helmet completely forgetting that I have a codriver drawing the road in front of me. “Right five, tightens into four.” Bam! I’ve already slammed into one of the sandbanks that line many of the stages. I reduce our speed to a crawl by rally standards and get passed by two cars. We encounter another competitor stuck on the side of the road. At the pace we were going we might as well help them out. A quick tug and they’re back on the road. We continue on our way and finish with one of the slowest times of the stage. I break out in a sweat.

The butterflies have all flown out of my stomach and I feel like I spent the last 13 miles driving through the woods and not partaking in an all out rally event. My stomach hardens and I feel the need to drive a little bit harder. I must not be driving correctly. Stage 2 starts and we are already moving quicker. I’m lifting less and just barely tapping the brake with my left foot on the big turns. We finish without incident and we felt elated. That was fun. We get into service and replace our defunct spare with one donated by car #30 driven by Jason Smith and Jared Lantzy of Broken Motorsports. A quick check over and everything seems fine. Onto SS 3. Turning it up a notch, we finished the stage feeling even happier than we did on SS2. We were quickly realizing that we were feeling better the harder we drove.

Continuing the trend we drive a bit faster and have even more fun and I was feeling more in control. We finish SS4 and move on to SS5, which is the reverse of SS1. I feel nervous after sliding off the road the first time on the stage. We start and I notice that conditions have improved. I push the pedal further and we finish almost four minutes faster than we did going the other way. We go into service and I feel like I’m starting to connect with the road through the car. It’s a feeling that I’ve never felt before and I’m becoming addicted to it. With our extra lights on we move to the start of SS6 and the first of our two night stages. I’m not sure what to expect as I haven’t practiced at all at night. I quickly discover that night driving is my favorite. The darkness takes away every bit of distraction. At night you don’t notice the truck parked up the junction, the spectators standing off to the side, or the pond down the hill. To me it made the experience more pure. What a rush. We reshuffle the starting order while we wait for SS7 to be clear and I feel pressure to not fall off the pace and hold up the pack. We finish the stage third fastest, a far cry from the third slowest performance we had on the first stage. Cruising into the final technical inspection we feel ecstatic over what took place during the last twelve hours.

With the car packed up and normal clothes on, we walked into the awards ceremony just happy to have successfully finished. Sharing stories with other racers, crewmembers, volunteers, and fans, I came to realize just how great the rally community is. The amount of support, friendliness, and general have fun attitude was incredible and is something I enjoy surrounding myself with and contributing to. Rally is awesome and we can’t wait to do it again.

Revolutionary Rally Team would like to thank the following people: Anders Green, Amy Fiestel, and all the volunteers for making Sandblast happen. Jason Smith and Jared Lantzy for guiding us through our first event. Dylan from Valkyrie Motorsports, Caleb Bugg, and Dan Storer for ensuring that our car was ready to go at each service. Kyle and Keith Jackson from Jackson Rally for help getting the car where it is today. DirtyImpreza.com for all the inspiration and encouragement. And to all the other competitors, fans, and people that make rally such a great motorsport.