OREGON TRAIL RALLY 2006
Cavett Rally wins, places, wins, and was
8th at Oregon!!!
The 2006 Oregon Trail Rally was a success for the Cavett
Rally Motorsports team. The team finished day one of the National rally in 7th
place and had high yet reserved hopes of keeping that position as day 2
started. On the regional side we placed 1st overall in the Friday event
by a scant .4 sec over the super fast Hintz Bros. Racing team of Dave and Rick
Hintz driving a 2002 Subaru WRX. What was thought to be a 1 second loss turned
out to be a .4 win as during the Friday night event, the tenths of seconds were
not added up. The teams will tend to share times with each other to see who is
leading and how far behind the others are after each stage, but the total did
not include the tenths so the next morning in the official results it was quite
a surprise to find out we won!! It is amazing to battle for 6 stages and be
within a second. This is the second time in as many rallies that the CRM team
and the Hintz team have tied or nearly tied after a single day of competition.
On the oops note we had a “spin and finish” at the end of the 1st
stage after touching 130mph plus on the back straight at PIR I braked a little
too late and sent the car into a 360 spin across the grass and back onto the
track, in the correct direction I might add, and across the timing lights. On
the second run we posted the same time but without the back stretch top speed
and without the spin.
On Saturday the rally turned the other way despite it being
a good second place in the final results on paper for the regional event. We
were no where close to leading the regional and we started to tumble down the
order in the national standings. The hot team of the day in the regional
standings was Jamie Thomas of
Subie Gal Racing who after 4 stages led second
place by more than 30 seconds and would have pulled even further away for the
win but she lost 1
st and 2
nd gear and had to be towed out
on the penultimate stage of the day. CRM fell from 7
th place in the
national event to 10
th by the end of the day. Why you are
wondering????….well on stage 7 there was a “moment“ where the crown of the road
caught us out and caused a fish tail the pushed us off the road and onto the
grass section but, the car did “catch” and control came back and we continued.
As this happened Alan lost his place in the notes and with the stage being very
technical for the next 2 miles we never got back on the correct notes. Next
issue was on stage 9 the left front tire punctured and we were forced to drive
2 plus miles on the flat so on any right turns we had to slow way down as the
car would not turn. Then the last problem for the day was on the final stage
when I failed to plug in my intercom and for the first few miles of not hearing
the notes we decided to slow and plug in to finish the rest of the stage as not
having it plugged in was costing us too much time.
Day 3 started much better with some of my favorite stages of
the whole weekend. After the first stage of the day (13) we opened up a 17sec
lead in the regional this despite having the left rear brake line fail and
start to leak. After stage 14 a bent right front A-Arm needed changing and
after stage 15 the 3rd stage of the day we were able to push the
lead to over a min en route to a 2min overall win in the regional standings. On
the national side with a few retirements and a steady drive, unlike Saturday,
we moved up to an 8th place overall finish. On the Co-driver side of
things Alan was perfect all day Sunday without a single mistake maybe the best
day of racing the 2 of us have had together yet. Alan was really unbelievable
on the notes spot on and letter perfect. It was incredible and all of the
Sunday success and the win is to his credit.
previous event
DOO WOPS 2006
Cavett Rally Motorsports Ties for 1st
place on day 2.....
Hintz Bros Rally Team wins Doo Wops overall…..
Cavett Rally made a valiant effort to defend its 2005 Doo
Wop series championship but came up short in the end. We were unable to get
back the time lost on day one to the Hintz Brothers Rally Team who this year
had a trouble free weekend. As some may recall their WRX broke on the start of
the very last stage in 2005 which caused them to loose just enough time to the
Cavett Rally Impreza so we could capture the overall win by a scant few
seconds.
2006 Doo Wops was an event of 2nds for the CRM team of Gary
Cavett and veteran co-driver Alan Perry.
2nd overall on day one
2nd fastest stage time on the Brooklyn Tavern
stage
2nd overall on day two
2nd overall on the 2 day rally total
2nd in NW region driver class
2nd in open car classification
On a positive note the CRM Impreza was fast enough to keep
up with the top teams in the NW due to the replacement of the turbo prior to
the event. The old unit looked as if it was used for wood chipping having about
30% of the fan blades on the intake side chewed up and missing.
We also had the 2 top stage times on day 2 on the Smith Creek
Stage. For some reason the CRM Impreza likes that stage a lot. I only wish they
had a top 10 list for that stage like they do on Brooklyn.
CRM also drops its best ever time on the Brooklyn
stage to 6:55 finally breaking the 7:00 barrier after 3 years of trying. The previous
years times being a 7:01 and a 7:02. CRM is now listed as #11 on the all time
best stage times. Next years goals will be to get under the 6:50 mark and into
the top 10 all time!!