Slowboy Blog

Wow.

We’ve just finished the Oregon Trail Rally in second place overall - a good result in itself - but the best part is that it puts us right at the top of the Rally America points standings, mid-way through the season.

It also means we will compete at X Games for the third year in a row, which is terrific for us and our sponsors: ESPN’s X Games is huge. And we expect to be one of only four or possibly five teams that will have competed in all three X Games Rally Car Races.

The rally was really tough - super technical, twisty, and treacherous. We boiled our brakes several times. And many top teams went just a little over the edge and crashed.

It’s amazing who calls and emails you to share the celebration of being on top - crew members from the last eight years, overseas racers we know, car builders we’ve worked with, other competitors, reporters - it’s fantastic to hear that swell of support. Thank you to everyone who has made it possible.

Now we’re on our way with the Slowboy Racing Mitsubishi Evo up to Canada where we’re in second place in the championship by a handful of points. The goal is to go into the lead there too. Cross your fingers for us!

See you in Calgary, then STPR, and at X Games!

ACP

Last weekend we had a tough rally.

Really tough.

First of all, the 100 Acre Wood rally in Salem,
Missouri, is one of the fastest rallies in the Rally
America series. It’s full of flat-out, fifth gear,
blind crests, wide-open jumps, and hairy
foot-on-the-floor sweepers. Fun!

But add to that the fact that Salem had a freak ice
storm the day before the rally and this already
exciting course is now slick with a glossy layer of
ice. Ultimate bravery required.

Fortunately, we brought the right tires for our
Slowboy Racing Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. Yokohama
makes a couple of tires - the rally A034 and the
street ice tire IG20 - and we had the luxury of
choosing between them to run with the right one to
suit the stages that were more icy, or more snowy.
Some teams had only come with gravel tires, which, I
can tell you with some authority, do not work, on ice.
Those guys were running to Wal-Mart to buy winter
tires or even all-seasons. No kidding.

Anyway, we were prepared for the weather. What we
weren’t prepared for was for Ken Block to drive so
well in it. We knew he was definitely a threat going
into the contest because he’s won this event for the
last two years and the stages suit his flat-out style.
But the conditions for the past two years have been
much warmer and the roads have been covered in gravel
instead of ice. Full points to Ken, though, as he was
just as awesome this year and set a blazing pace. For
a guy who’s only been rally car racing seriously since
2005, he’s become a complete driver very quickly.

With Ken way out front from the early stages, we
decided not to risk it all to try and catch him.
Instead, we’d look for a podium finish and some good
points.

But several things conspired against us. First, we had
a flat on stage three, and drove it about four miles
– losing maybe 45 seconds. Then on stage four, we
caught Andrew Pinker, who was on two flats at the
time, and coming up to pass him I spun into a bank in
fifth gear, puncturing the radiator.

Fortunately we were able to drive that out, too, and
on the transit got towed in by a gentlemanly Matt
Johnson. So we finished the first day battered and in
sixth place. My awesome crew managed to straighten the
front of the car and replace the rad and intercooler,
and by Saturday morning the car looked perfect.

Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving. On the first
stage of Day 2, the dogs on fourth gear let go and I
had to drive the whole day without fourth. This is a
very difficult thing. Our ‘box is a five speed, so
when you’re flat out in a fifth-gear corner and it
tightens, you fall out of the power curve for fifth
but are still too fast for third. We can only really
get around the corners by being on the power, so this
makes for very difficult driving.

We fought this all day, slowly clawing our way onto
the podium, running in the top three all day. We even
won the Super Special stage 10 (but we didn’t need any
gear higher than third for that). I had another spin
pushing this hard, and so our service crew had to
replace the radiator again…. sigh.

Night fell and the temperature dropped and the mushy
surface that had been warmed by the day’s sunlight
froze solid. On the start line of the last stage, our
fans weren’t working, only two auxiliary lights were
working, we had a right front tire down to 18psi, and
it was starting to sprinkle rain onto the icy surface.
Nice.

And in this we had to try to push onto the podium.

About three miles into the last, very difficult stage,
I went fast into a corner for which I really needed
fourth gear, and couldn’t get to third in time. We
were going at least 40 mph when we went over a crest
in the road and off the outside, smacking a tree with
the left tail and the right front. The result: we
basically wiped those two corners right off the car.

But the Mitsu is a tough car, and we didn’t waste any
time looking at the damage. Instead, we’d barely
stopped moving when we jammed it into reverse, backed
out of the woods, and finished the rally. People at
the finish couldn’t believe the car could drive at
all. In fact it drove fine and was even aligned. But
for all four corners, all that was left was the left
front headlight. The carnage was ridiculous.

Oops.

Anyway, the result, combined with our second overall
at the first event of the season, puts us second
overall in the Rally America Championship, only three
points off Ken Block in the factory Subaru and into
the lead of the North American Rally Championship.

It’s all thanks to getting this poor punished car over
the finish line. And this is the lesson, as Winston
Churchill said: “Never give
in, never give in, never, never, never, never.”

Or, as we say in rallying: “Press on, regardless.”

Good luck out there,

ACP

Smooth and steady:

Anything can happen in winter rallying, and usually does. Two weeks ago we saw two of our main competitors take the snowbank, one blow his engine, and one hit a deer while about to win the rally. And we kept our noses clean and finished second.

This weekend another snowbank claimed one of our main competitors at the Rallye Perce Neige-Maniwaki. On a stage almost 30 miles long - the longest in North America, and held twice at night - we came upon Sylvain Erickson in his Subaru parked backwards and sideways in the road, about 10 miles into the stage. Turns out he had gone wide, hit a bank (so far, that’s normal on a winter rally) but in the bank was a rock, and that bent his skidplate in half, and it was dragging so badly he couldn’t continue.

Problem was, he was parked across the road and almost unpassable. We saw that he and his codriver were ok, then did the only thing we could do - we took a run at the snowbank and punched a hole for ourselves (and everyone behind us). When you rally, sometimes you have to use your car in creative ways.

About 8 miles later we started coming into snow dust which we thought was weird - we had been ahead of Pat Richard, returning from semi-retirement - through the first reseed, but he put in some really good times on the 20-mile Kitigan-Zibi stage and was reseeded ahead of us. Still, amongst the top cars, the one minute gaps rarely get closed up unless there’s a problem.

Well, snow dust is super-hard to drive in, and we did it for five miles, over some biiiiig jumps, mostly blind, until we were finally able to come right up on Pat. When he saw us he was a gentleman, signalled, and let us by him - turns out he had been driving hard or was just unlucky and hit something that gave him a leak in his left rear tire. He was having trouble
just keeping the car on the road.

Just as we passed him the road turned very icy and I spun and hit a bank right in front of his car. He tried to stop but the ice got him too and he ran into us.

Yeah - two cars on a deserted country road in the middle of the forest and we manage to hit each other. NASCAR is on the phone.

Anyway we slowed down a lot after that, as suddenly we were up to second place and into valuable Championship points.

Pat turned up the wick to try to catch us back on the last 40 miles of the rally, but we sped up enough on the last stage to hold him off, and we came in second. Good start to the Canadian season.

That’s the thing about winter rallying: you have to drive just fast enough to do well, but never go over the edge. For a second time in two weeks, we drove a rally at 80% aggression (maybe 90% on the last stage at Perce) and
finished second overall.

But now the game changes - we’re going back to gravel in two weeks at the 100 Acre Wood rally in Missouri. We came in third there last year in a very competitive field. It’s a fast, smooth, technical event.

Here comes 10/10ths racing…

ACP

Thanks to the crew that kept the Slowboy Evo running faultlessly all
weekend: Nick, Francois, Rob, Eric, and New Guy TJ.
ACP

We’re just returning from the SnoDrift Rally 2008 -the first rally of the season and the first points event on the way to X Games 14.

And we had an EXCELLENT result. We had tested the car the week before and we knew that we would be in good shape, but from there our strategy was just to drive smart, be in the top five in every single stage, and with that plan to be on the podium.

Well, the plan was executed perfectly. The car ran flawlessly, we barely touched a single snowbank, and we watched all of our main competitors either blow up (Rockstar Subaru Andrew Pinker), get stuck in a snowbank (Rockstar Tanner Foust and Subaru USA Ken Block), or intersect with wildlife (Subaru USA Travis Pastrana).

By rights Travis should have won the thing. He was the class of the field for the whole event and only lost it in the second to last stage when a deer (with a Rockstar logo on it’s hindquarters?) jumped in front of his car and took out the intercooler, rad, and pulleys. He was robbed.

We ended up second, which is not as good as the victory we had in 2006 here, but good nonetheless and lots of important points.

The crew was awesome as usual, and we had the pleasure of the assistance of “Buck” - the crew chief for one of our close rally friends, Doug Gore.

Problem is Doug, like Buck, is from Jamaica. Where it’s warm. Much warmer than upper Michigan in January.

Anyway we wrapped Buck on a heat blanket and sent him back home after the event. Buck - when you start to feel your fingers again, dial the phone and give us a call.

Perce Neige next Feb. 9 - we won that one last year.

Wish us luck.

ACP

The first event of the 2008 season - the SnoDrift Performance Rally - takes place in upper Michigan next weekend. We won the event in 2006 and debuted our new Slowboy Evo there in 2007 and were in second place overnight. We’ve always done well there.

It’s a tricky rally and requires some specialized snow and ice skills. Fortunately, we have the right tires in Yokohamas, and we have experience setting the car up for this.

Our strategy will be to go pretty easy - we have the first Canadian event of the season two weeks later, and besides, we presume that X Games invitations will again be based on overall points so finishing is more important than setting the world on fire. But I’m expecting at least to podium - maybe better if we can….

We’re testing this weekend in a secret location where there’s enough snow right now, and I’m playing with some different spring settings and diff setup. The devil’s in the details…

Watch this space and rally-america.com (that’s our car on the current press release) for updates and results. Let’s show the competition how it’s done!

ACP

What a crazy year - looking forward to 08 and beyond. 

Mike Huml – Slowboy

We crashed.

Not a bad crash, as crashes go. Very little damage - front suspension arm, tie rod, tweak the rad support and intercooler back a little and we’ll be back in business. But still…

We knew this was the game. We had to win the rally or there was no point. We couldn’t finish worse than second in the Championship. The only way we could win, though, was to win the final rally last weekend.

So we went out of the gate flat out. We won a couple of stages by over ten seconds each - a huge margin over a 6 mile distance. But driving on the edge means you go over it sometimes, and we did.

So, we didn’t finish the Rally of the Tall Pines 2007. But we did finish second overall in both the Canadian Rally Championship and the North American Rally Championship. We were top ten in the Rally America Championship, despite not contesting all the events. Pretty good results. Put that together with a good performance at X Games and great support on both sides of the border, and it’s been a great year.

Thanks to Slowboy Racing, Yokohama, Mitsubishi Canada, First Commonwealth Bank, K&N, and all our other sponsors. What a season.

And thanks to the crew - the guys and gals who have been out in the heat and sleet across North America this season. You know who you are, and you know it couldn’t be done without you.

On to 2008. There are championships waiting…

ACP

As I’m tightening the bolts on the uber-heavy duty shocks on the Slowboy Rally Evo, checking the preload on the diffs, and putting new gears in the dogbox, I’m thinking about just what all this gear will go
through next weekend.

Normally a rally is an insanely gruelling event. Cars go through shunts and shocks that would disable a normal car. But the rally car is gusseted, plated, reinforced, shielded etc. to go through all this.

But that’s a normal rally. The Rally of the Tall Pines in Bancroft Ontario next weekend promises to be anything but normal.

It’s going to be flat out.

If we win the rally and our main competition has a bad day, we will win the Canadian Rally Championship. Any other result, including us not finishing, will result in second overall in the Championship. There’s nothing to lose. We’ll be wide open.

It gives you a special perspective working on the car when you know what you’re about to do to it. I wish I were one of those guys who could just show up and race a prepped car - that I wouldn’t think about what I’ll have to do to fix it if it breaks.

But the next rally isn’t until the end of January. If the car breaks, I have a long time to fix it. And so I won’t think about that now.

I’ll just drive. Flat out.

ACP

“Wheels off, axle nuts, ball joints, top two nuts 14mm, 18″ extension through the wheelarch, disconnect hydraulic line (AN fitting 11/16″), three bottom nuts 17mm, rear engine mount two 14mm box ends (still oughtta weld that nut on to be blind), lever engine forward, prise case of gearbox, turn case 45 degrees and lower.”

You know you’re working on the car too much when you start dreaming about it. Honestly I think I could write a service manual for the Evolution 9, although to be fair only an Evo 9 customized to be a rally car.

I’m preparing the Slowboy Racing Evolution 9 rally car for the final rally of the season, the Rally of the Tall Pines north of Toronto, Ontario. It’s the final event of the Canadian Championship, the final event of the North American Rally Championship, and the final big rally of 2007.

And the whole Canadian championship is at stake.

All year, Antoine L’Estage and I have been running at the front of the Canadian Championship, and since the X Games in August most of my rallying has focused on this series of events. Antoine is an excellent driver, and although I held the lead in the championship for the first half of the year, he’s done well in the second half and in order to take the championship back I have to win at Tall Pines and he has to finish poorly. It’s a tall order, but in rallying, you never know what’s going to happen.

So car prep is extremely important. Not finishing the rally is not an option. And the car has to handle perfectly, and not stumble at all. And so I’m in the shop tonight.

The description above is how to remove the center differential and transfer case, by the way. The shop manual says it should take the better part of a day, dropping the subframe, taking the engine out, etc. That’s the next thing I have to do tonight. If it goes well, taking it out will be about an hour.

It’s putting it back in that’s hard.

ACP

We’ve just arrived in the Upper Peninsula of Upper
Michigan - that’s waaaay up there to you Americans and
somewhere down around Thunder Bay for you Canadians -
for the last round of the 2007 Rally America
Championship: the Lake Superior Performance Rally -
one of the toughest and oldest events on the calendar.

Last weekend we were rallying in Merritt BC, just
outside of Vancouver, in the second-last round of the
Canadian rally Championship. We won six or seven
stages and finished on the podium, but I did not
expect a freak blizzard and so did not bring snow
tires.

Mistake. There was a freak blizzard.

On the snow, the tires I had were very difficult to
drive and so we slipped to third overall despite our
other fast times. Frustrating, but that’s racing. And
now my crew can never make fun of me again for
bringing too many tires.

And needless to say, we’ve got our snow tires with us
now…

Between events we stopped in at a great rally friend’s
place outside of Seattle to reprep the Slowboy Racing
Mitsu Evo 9 and do some testing. Fortunately despite
the snow we didn’t do any damage to the car last
weekend and so the reprep was pretty simple. Also
rally friends are really really patient so although we
stayed long we didn’t overstay our warm welcome.

So now we’re really ready to go at the last round.

If we win the rally this weekend, we will win the 2007
North American Rally Championship. If we don’t win it,
we will have to wait until the Rally of the Tall Pines
a month from now to fund out. That will also be where
we push for the Canadian Championship on the final
event.

So it’s definitely a nail-biter end of the season.

At the moment we’re chasing a problem with our center
differential electronic control that has the system
going into fail-safe mode in the middle of the stage
and reverting to rear-wheel drive which is a handful,
especially on snow. Vancouver Mitsubishi helped us out
by letting us use their MUT-III diagnostic tool, and
Ralliart New Zealand helped with some technical
advice. The center diff is incredibly complex, but is
definitely one of the car’s competitive advantages.

So as we arrive in Houghton Michingan, I and the crew
will work to finish fixing the diff problem. If we can
fix it, I’m sure that we will be competitive. The US
championship is hotly-contested right now though, and
everyone will be going fast. watch this space for Team
Slowboy’s results!

ACP