Story and Photos by Timothy Williams
People look at me funny when I tell them I’m taking time off from work to go to a rally.
“No, a rally race,” I say. There’s nothing political about where I’m headed.
2009 was my first season attending rallies, though friends of mine had been trying to drag me to the local rally in the 100 Acre Wood for the past couple of years. I’d always been a fan of powerful machines and tromping around through the forest, so rallying was a perfect fit.
Last year’s 100 Acre Wood was my first rally, but after that I was hooked. The season was a whirlwind of road trips as I went with fellow Missourians to volunteer at other rallies - 6,500 miles across 11 states and I had five races under my belt.
Friends who didn’t understand my new found obsession were confused about the hundreds of new pictures appearing on my Facebook profile and Flickr page, and they didn’t understand why I would go to places with weird names and no cell phone coverage to do anything at all.
Needless to say, I was ecstatic that DirtyImpreza.com - The Off-Road Impreza Community, asked me to shoot photos for them at this year’s 2010 Sno*Drift rally.
Sno*Drift 2010
None of my experiences last season prepared me for Sno*Drift 2010.
I was prepared for the frigid temperatures, the throngs of people every time Travis Pastrana’s head poked out of his trailer, and the hundreds of miles of driving.
What I wasn’t prepared for were the road conditions. Sno*Drift? Should have been called Ice*Drift. The roads had melted and refrozen leaving behind a thick layer of mirror-smooth ice. You could hardly stay upright, and there was zero grip for any car trying to do something like, say, compete in a race.
Nearly impassable road conditions, of course, won’t stop a rally. Over 50 cars of all different types started the race - from Travis Pastrana and Dave Mirra’s 2010 Subaru Impreza WRX STIs, Ken Block’s new 2011 Ford Fiesta, and the Mitsubishi Evo X of Antoine L’Estage to the smattering of Subarus from drivers such as Tim Rooney, Pietr Fetela, and Henry Krolikowski. There was also the usual assortment of Volkswagens from Gary Wiggin, Matt Bushore, and Chris Duplessis, just to name a few. There was also a Suzuki, a BMW, a couple of Ford Focuses and an Escort.
Subaru traditionally has a huge contingent of cars at any rally event, and this year’s Sno*Drift was no exception. The Krolikowski’s and their fabulous 2000 blueprint-spec impreza, Decker and Craig’s 93 Impreza, and Pastrana and Mirra’s immaculately built STI’s are just a drop in the sea of all-wheels-driven boxer engine madness.
Friday
Ken Block, his new car, and the Monster World Rally Team, were the big story at the beginning of Friday. Hundreds of people checked out his new Ford Fiesta’s public debut at Sno*Drift’s opening Parc Expose. His race performances seemed to justify all the attention, too. Block set the fastest time on Stage 1, and was keeping pace with L’estage and Pastrana throughout the rest of the day. Ken was apparently flogging the little Ford just a bit too hard, though, as he broke a control arm very near the end of Friday, ending the rally prematurely for Mr. Block.
With Block and the Fiesta dropping out of the race, a big opening appeared for William Bacon, a privateer entry, to slide into 3rd place at the end of the first day. The top three would remain unchanged for the rest of the event, with L’estage in second, and Pastrana (and his freshly broken collarbone) finishing the race in first place.
After a day of racing, the teams returned to their work rigs to get their cars prepared for the next day.
Saturday
Overnight, crews were able to make some changes to the car setups, hoping to make them more capable to handle the glare ice. The drivers and co-drivers started the day somewhat wiser, what with 8 stages of ice racing under their belt. This small amount of added confidence helped keep cars on the road, and may have given teams a bit more speed.
The day’s racing went smoothly enough for the most part. Stages ran on-time, and there were very few DNFs overall. That’s not to say, though, that nothing exciting happened! Dave Mirra, in his Subaru Rally Team Impreza WRX STI, had what (from the damage) appeared to be a pretty hefty crash. Tantalizingly close to the end of the final stage, he managed to rip all of his lights and most of the bumper off of the car. Thinking he had blown it so close to the end, he put out his orange caution triangle and waited to get picked up by the sweep vehicle. Upon looking at the car, though, it seemed that all of the car’s vitals were still intact. With nothing to lose, Mirra hopped back in the car, hit the ‘Start’ button on the dash, and his STi fired right up. By the light of his co-driver Derek Ringer’s flashlight, Mirra managed to finish the stage - and the rally.
Sno*Drift proved to be a very interesting start to the 2010 Rally America National Championship series. You can learn more about Sno*Drift by visiting their website - http://www.sno-drift.org.
The series continues next month at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood. The fast, flowing roads of Salem, MO could not be more different from the slippery, frozen conditions of Atlanta, MI. You can learn more about 100 Acre Wood by visiting http://www.100aw.org.
Full race results (and lots more information) are available on the Rally America website, http://www.Rally-America.com
For more coverage of US rallies, including the Rally America National Championship, be sure to visit DirtyImpreza.com for all your Subaru Impreza specific rally information needs.
