Well it didn't work out quite as we'd hoped. We came out hard on Saturday morning and started whittling away at Tanner's lead. We had it down to 5 seconds when we lost 3rd gear in the middle of a stage. By the end of the stage the gear selector was stuck in 2nd. We ran the next stage in 2nd and made it back to service. It was a short service but we decided to drain the tranny and see if we could remove the blockage.
We pulled out lots of bits of 3rd gear and refilled, but we didn't quite get it buttoned up in time and were 2 minutes late checking out or service (0:24 penalty). We'd hoped that the drain/refill would unbind whatever was jammed, but it didn't- we were still stuck in 2nd. At this point there were still 25 stage miles and 60 transit miles to go in the rally, but Matthew needed to finish for championship points so we were not about to quit.
So we ran the whole friggin' rest of the event in 2nd. On stages it was not actually
that bad, although obviously we were speed limited to 65 mph where we would've been at 100+ in a lot of places, but MJ carried speed wherever he could and on one short stage we were only 3 seconds behind our other main competitor. On the last 2 stages, though (12 and 11 miles, respectively) we were hemorrhaging time like crazy. We just hoped to salvage 3rd place.
As luck (good/bad?) would have it, our other main competitor was having tranny problems as well, so when we got back to the final control in town (let me tell you, those 40 minute transits get
really long at 6000rpm) we found that we actually managed to hang on to 2nd! 2 Open class cars got by us so we dropped to 8th overall, but class position is the main thing for points and also Subaru contingency $$$, so we were overjoyed with the result under the circumstances.
Of course we would have liked to finish the great battle we had going with Tanner Foust, and I think we clearly had a chance to beat him, but that will be for another day now I suppose. For my part I had a great time being back in the car with Matthew again. We were having a lot of fun (most of the time...
) and hauling some major ass! It was a good trip.
_________________
Carl Fisher
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531
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