[thechat] Car/Racing Nerds (was Gas Prices)

[Judah McAuley]

I am a car nerd in the making.  Don't really have enough money to be a good 
car nerd. But the family hobby is putting on ProRally and RallyCross 
events.  Last weekend I was in Tillamook, OR to put on the Oregon Trail Pro 
Rally (http://www.oregontrailrally.com/ It has some great photos).  This 
year I finally got around to getting my Ham license, so I was working 
communications controls.

We had 61 entries from US, Canada, and the UK this year.  It was a pretty 
good event this year, although the weather was a bit freakish.  We're about 
20 inches of rain shy of where we should be this time of year (bad drought 
coming this summer) and didn't have much of a winter this year.  But the 
weather tried to make up for it last weekend.  We had sun, rain, sleet, 
hail, and snow pretty much constantly.  It made for some pretty spectacular 
crashes, although no one was hurt thankfully.  Best two crashes of the 
event:  Noel Lawler in his 600 hp Hyundai Tiburon hit an obstacle at about 
100mph, flipped end over end, and ended upside down in a creek.  No 
injuries and, sadly, no in car camera footage.  Other best crash: A VW Golf 
slides through a snowy downhill corner, goes off the road about 50 ft, down 
a 30 ft cliff (wheels below him) and lands squarely on a fallen 4 ft 
diameter tree.  Driver and Co-Driver were ok, and with the aid of a tow 
truck crane and 3 cars with winches, we were able to extract the car and it 
drove out under its own power.

I've got to say that this year the Brits really showed us how Rally is 
run.  Brits finished 1-2 this year (2001 Subaru WRX and Mitsubishi EVO 
IV).  Previously the Tiburons were the hot cars on the block.  Parity was 
reached this year with Mitsubishi and Subaru taking the top 6 and 4 of the 
top 10 spots respectively.  This year also marks the US entrance of the 
European ProDrive group and also brought the US it's first official FIA 
sanctioned Rally.

Ok, I'm just about done being a rally nerd for the morning.  And for any of 
you with high bandwidth connections, here is a pretty good RealVideo file 
of some of the action.  It includes a nice rollover around a corner. 
http://www.subiegal.com/images/Movie/SCCA2001.ram

Sigh, back to work now.

Judah