Matthew Johnson at Oregon Trail Rally

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Tue Apr 18, 2006 4:09 pm

I'll use this thread to post results/updates as I get them. Right now he's on his way out there, pulling his car and Pat Moro's on a double trailer behind a box truck.

He sent this update:

Matthew Johnson wrote:

Hey guys, a quick update from the road. We're in a rented box truck pulling
a 41 foot trailer with two WRXs on it. We've had one flat tire but were able
to use the trailer spare (since the truck didn't have a spare) to hobble
along to Des Monies IA , about 60 miles from our flat tire incident.

Currently we're about to enter Idaho (who da ho?) this is my favorite part
of the drive across.

Last night our tail wind shifted into a 20-30mph head wind and the truck
struggled to keep 50... THEN the snow started. It's still 20F at night and
snowing in many parts of Wyoming. Our night driving until midnight was
watching sideways snow and getting tossed around in the wind while the truck
zinged away in 2nd gear... It seems to get about 7-8mpg depending on the
hills and such. I figure that's pretty darn respectable given the 23,000lbs
of weight.
We stopped on the CAT scales and had 3400 front axles, about 9,9xx on the
rear of the truck and 10,080 on the 3 trailer axles.
Speaking of this trailer, it's a three axle version and is really smooth. I
thought the big trailer may boss the truck around a bit but you barely know
it's back there until you try to stop or go. Even over bumps it barely shows
up.

Gotta send this before loosing signal.

PS, Wendy is planning to bring a satellite truck up to Oregon and send
in-car video up to the web during the rally for Tanner, Me, Sans and some
other west coast guy. Tune in to my website (later..) to see a link or
Rally America should have it as well.

Will send another update if I can!

OH! Gas in WY and Utah is $2.35

MJ

Andrew_Frick · **Posted:** Fri Apr 21, 2006 4:15 pm

This event starts today. I am interested to see how he does out west. And the sameday webcast coverage is interesting. Check out

http://www.oregontrailrally.com/

and

http://www.rally-america.com/event.oregon.2006.php

for more details.

Andrew_Frick · **Posted:** Sat Apr 22, 2006 10:34 am

Looks like Matthew is 5th overall and first in PGT by less than 2 seconds after the first 6 stages.

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Sun Apr 23, 2006 10:06 am

Things not looking so good for MJ right now, as he's fallen back to 9th overall and 3rd in class On the first 4 Saturday stages he was +0:12, +0:43, +0:27, and +0:09 to class leader Tanner Foust before finally matching his pace on the final 2 stages.

They have almost 60 stage miles to run today (Sunday), but that Tanner is as cool as the underside of a pillow, so barring mechanical difficulties it'll be hard for Matthew to overcome his current 1:28 deficit. I hate to wish misfortune on Tanner, though- maybe just a flat tire on stage... :wink:

Speaking of mechanical problems, Eric Langbein and Jeremy Wimpey, currently 2nd in PGT class, apparently lost 3rd gear on the last Saturday stage. With average stage speeds in the 45-55mph range, that's a tough loss. They apparently had no plans to plan to try and fix it last night, so they'll be at a big disadvantage today.

I saw some of the streaming video yesterday- what I saw included some in-car from Eric and Jeremy, some of Matthew and Kim, and a long fixed-camera shot of what looked like a Main Time Control. It came on around 3pm EDT - if you're sitting in front of your computer between then and 9pm or so you might want to see what's on http://www.rallynetcast.com/

Emmie Fisher · **Posted:** Sun Apr 23, 2006 7:08 pm

Matthew made some suspension changes after yesterday's stages and, after 16 stages reported (click on Results), he's moved into 1st place in PGT and 5 overall!

Still some streaming video of Mattew's incar happening at www.rallynetcast.com.

GO MATTHEW!!!

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:20 pm

Well it looks like Tanner got that flat after all... but so did Matthew. But Tanner lost 2 minutes to his woes, letting MJ slide past to take the PGT class win and 5th overall! Tanner dropped back to 11th overall, and 4th in PGT.

An update from the man:

Matthew Johnson wrote:

We won. Was fun. Will send update in truck tomorrow.
Time to relax now!

8 spins... One flat... One finish sign in the fender at about 80mph(with
dent) ... Plenty of luck too!

Whew.

Hope ya'll had a nice weekend. MJ

More as we get it! :redcool:

Andrew_Frick · **Posted:** Mon Apr 24, 2006 8:15 am

It also looks like Tanner got an 10 minute road penalty on one of the last couple of stages. I wonder what that was abount?

Great result for Matthew back in the championship hunt.

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Mon Apr 24, 2006 10:14 am

Hmm, I didn't see that in the results last night...

It looks like Tanner's penalty was incurred at ATC 15, which was the first stage after a service. The update notes mentioned they planned to change the master cylinder at service- maybe they went way over.

But I thought Rally America assessed lateness at 0:12 per minute, which would've meant they checked in 50 minutes late to receive 10 minutes in penalty?

I'm guessing it was something else... I'll get the poopage from MJ.

AndersGreen · **Posted:** Mon Apr 24, 2006 2:07 pm

Carl Fisher wrote:

But I thought Rally America assessed lateness at 0:12 per minute, which would've meant they checked in 50 minutes late to receive 10 minutes in penalty?

I thought the 0:12 was supps-dependent. Anyway, yeah, 50 minutes sounds fishy. It would seem much more likely that it was one of the 10 minute penalties from the rule book.

Interesting... let us know.

Anders

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Mon Apr 24, 2006 5:21 pm

OK, just talked to Matthew. Tanner's 10min penalty was for working on his car inside a control zone. After his flat on Stage 15 (I think it was), the flailing tire carcass tore up his front fender, and he got out of the car and was prying it out of the way. For those of you unfamiliar with rally, the areas where time cards are handled are called Control Zones, and competitors are not allowed to do any work on the car at all- even simply opening the hood is a violation (I'm not sure about cleaning the windshield or checking tire pressures). MJ wasn't sure whether this work was conducted at the finish of 15 or at the start of 16- the former seems more likely, but why he couldn't wait a little longer and do this once he got out of the control zone is a mystery to me.

But there is more intrigue! At the post-event impound, the inspectors usually pick some random item for all Production cars to tear down, and this time they decided to check for functioning rear window mechanicals. Seems that Tanner's rear window electric motors were missing, and most of the rest of the mechanicals were in a bag at the bottom of the door. This violation was his 2nd of the season (of 3 events so far! :shock:

) so, per the rulebook, he was excluded from the event! I'm not sure if he has any sponsors, but if he does I can't imagine they'd be happy to hear that news.

Veerrry interesting!

Kevin Hoff · **Posted:** Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:20 pm

Why oh why do people have to find tortured readings of every rule. It's going to make the rally rulebook look like the autox rulebook. The PGT "must be stock unless specifically allowed" thing seems pretty straightforward to me... If people want to make their cars super light go run open.

--Kevin H.

AndersGreen · **Posted:** Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:32 am

Kevin Hoff wrote:

If people want to make their cars super light go run open.

Exaaaaaaactly.

One factor that I think comes in to play is "What if you want to run an AWD car, but don't want to race against the very front of the pack and their $$$?" PGT is the next step down. I think at least some of the folks are there because the want to run AWD but don't have the $$$ for open, which is a different reason than being there because they like the idea of running a stock vehicle (or being in a spec WRX class).

Now that I think about it, NRS's stock rules are less torturous than RA's, but NRS has the P2 class (naturally aspirated AWD) and maybe that's why? Because there's a place for low(er)-dollar AWD? I've seen several cars go from stock to P2 in the last year or so.

Cheers,
Anders

Andrew_Frick · **Posted:** Tue Apr 25, 2006 7:52 am

I actually like the production rules for rally america. They force you to NOT modify your car. Some of the rules are a bit silly. Like having to keep the A-pillar trim but being allowed to modify it to make room for the cage.

I think the major issue is that SCCA stopped inforcing the P and PGT rules recently and now RA is bringing in a big stick which is catching some folks out.

The only major difference that I see between NRS and RA in production is NRS allows you to reinforce suspension and fame pieces provided you don't make a hollow area with your reinforcements.

Anyhow, back on topic congrats to Matthew for a good win.

Carl Fisher · **Posted:** Wed Apr 26, 2006 11:11 am

Latest from MJ:

Matthew Johnson wrote:

Hey ya'll,

I'm half way across Nebraska on the way back now. Earlier in Wyoming it was
really snowy still at 8500 feet. It's hard to make myself dress
appropriately when I know it's hot at home or somewhere. Whatever. Lately it
also seems hard to cause myself to open bottles with liquid in them like
mustard, lotion or shampoo without first shaking it to the front so it's
ready to smoothly dispense. Last night in .. Uh....Idaho I started that
learning process and hadn't learned today by the time I'd gotten mustard all
over the place in the back of the box truck that I thought to myself "hey,
self, just a few thousand feet of elevation really will make a difference in
these common processes, I should open these more carefully.

OK< back to rally content.

Oregon is a three day event, this year with 6 stages per day. The first 6
are little stages on Friday night at the Portland Int'l Raceway. We make a
couple laps of the race track and then a couple of hokey doke pieced
together stages around the track's access roads. One of them used the
motocross track start this year. My car never felt good on Friday but I
pushed on anyway, we had a bolt _fall_ out of the bottom of the car which
held one side of the transmission cradle to the chassis. Chris at VT Car had
a suggestion that helped John Groo with friend Andy and Brian Burroughs (my
crew for the weekend) find the right place to cut a hole in the floor to get
to the backside of the stripped chassis bolt.

Not too much drama Friday, crossed the finish line at 90mph almost out of
control and swiped out the finish sign. Have a nice little dent in the
fender to show for it too...

Saturday my car felt even worse. I kept thinking it was brakes or alignment
or something and just struggled on. All day Saturday I felt as if we were
doomed for a big crash! Especially on these scary freggin' roads. They are
narrow, twisty, drops on one side and bank on the other, crowned and
sometimes you can ditch hook. The problem with ditch hooking however is
that it allows you to carry a LOT of speed through whichever corner it works
on,,, but then you come up out of the hook and across the crowned road and
have to figure out how to survive the next corner... Which you've just
arrived at WAY faster than you wished.

Anyway, my car was skating around really badly, each time I'd try to get it
turned in it wouldn't go as I intended, then by the time it was rotated I
was passing the apex off line and getting into loose stuff and skating over
near the edges of these 'ready to whoop your a$$ and take your name' roads.
After spinning 6 times during the day I decided to work on the driver
some... And drove the next stage at 80%. It went well and had no spins and
put in a decent time but still running 3rd PGT times behind Tanner and Eric
Langbein. Luckily later we had a delay and as I talked it over with Tanner
and Eric (Eric is a suspension engineer for Formula Mazda cars as his JOB)
we figured out my suspension was too hard. I softened the hi-speed bump
quite a bit and immediately went back to setting equal or winning PGT times
on the last two Sat stages.

Sunday morning I softened the suspension almost fully and went out on an
attack. The car felt GREAT and I was pushing. With a 30 sec deficit to Eric
and a 1:30 to Tanner I expected to reel in Eric but didn't think I'd catch
Tanner. After the first two stages I'd taken 2nd place back by 1-2sec.
However, it must be said that these stages were not as dangerous as the deep
forest ones and I was more comfortable taking chances.

Back into the forests for 40 more miles Sunday afternoon we were doing well
but I still wasn't totally happy with the whole package, driver, car,
codriver.. Etc. To sum it up, Tanner had brake trouble and went off
getting a flat, then Eric had to follow his dust out of the stage. I arrived
at the finish control with both of them still sitting there.
Eric ('Bang Bang' is what we call him) and I fought well over the last
couple stages until he started loosing the turbo.

I had two stages to drive well and finish cleanly to win and I did just
that. Well, almost... I somehow thought I may get lucky and catch Dedo if he
had any more issues so I pushed onwards. With a couple more spins in the
next to the last stage it was clear that it was time to chill so I did the
last stage at 95% and here we are.

Oregon EATS tires, I did 10 miles on a new set and they looked like 40 miles
of wear from Maine.

Gotta send this before loosing signal again!

Hope ya'll are all well, planning to see you at the RallyX in May.
Matthew

Kevin Hoff · **Posted:** Wed Apr 26, 2006 3:15 pm

Andrew_Frick wrote:

I actually like the production rules for rally america. They force you to NOT modify your car.

Exactly! (I like them too. Less mods allowed = more $$$ for events. People who like open rules are either rich or naive.)

Awesome result for MJ - the more he posts the more I'm impressed by his performance at the event.

--Kevin H.

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