The Ziptie Rally Team comprised of the Open Class 171 of Carl Siegler and Dave Goodman and the Open Light Class 858 of Anthony Israelson and Jason Standage had a challenging time at the Nemadji Trail 2 stage rally. Nemadji Trail uses two roads in the Nemadji State forest to create twin three stage rallysprints. The day started off badly for the 858 car when the hood blew open during a routine odo calibration which resulted in a shattered windshield. Rally America requires cars to run with safety glass on front so the crew, led by ZRT crew chief Matt Alexander, began the frantic job of removing the broken glass and sourcing a new windshield. Unfortunately, noon on a Saturday in Duquette, MN is not the easiest time to locate Subaru windows. While the crew was able to get the car completely prepped for new glass, a clean window could not be sourced so 858 was forced to DNS. Car 171 was coming off a very short downtime after completing STPR only 2 weeks prior. The car ran very strong in Pennsylvania and propelled them to a 3rd in-class, 3rd overall finish for the Sherwood Forest regional. With the car in good shape Carl and Dave were excited to be racing back in Minnesota. The two set the pace on both SS1 and SS2 and took the overall win on both stages with Chad Exienberger and Janusz Topor closely on their heels. SS3 would end in disaster when Carl lost a corner in the hanging dust and failed to shed enough speed resulting in a minor off with the car high centered on the edge of the corner. The car was stuck just enough that they were unable to free it under their own power and the two dropped to last overall. Chad Eixenberger and Colin Vickman would take the overall win after Janusz Topor and Michal Kaminski took 2 minutes in penalties for speeding on transit. The Subaru was undamaged in the off and Carl and Dave were able to continue for the second half of the rally. With the road now swept of loose gravel and increased traction Janusz and Chad were able to pick up the pace considerably beating Carl on the remaining 3 stages. A consistent drive led to a 2nd in class and 3rd overall finish for the 171 team. Also of note for the weekend was Dan Drury, one of the original Ziptie Rally founders and 2009 crew chief, taking the G5 win in both events. This was Dan's first ever rally as a co-driver and he had his hands full sitting in the silly seat of Jim Cox's 558 S-10 rally truck. Dan quickly adapted to his new role as co-driver and is looking forward to more experiences on the competitor side of things. Dan will be co-driving for ZRT 858 at Nemadji Trail 3 as Jason Standage has other commitments that weekend. [YOUTUBE]Dw5ftdW0i24[/YOUTUBE]
Tough weekend for the Ziptie team. You know you have the speed to win stages, now you just have dodge the ditches ;p I'm already looking forward to codriving in the 858. Navigating with a working rally computer will be strange.
If you would have hit something when took that shortcut in ss6, then maybe, but you still finished the second rally, so nice job, you guys look so much smoother now than you did last year. Sent from my ADR6300 while doing 120 down the freeway
lulz... yeah Carl has improved 1000000% over last year....which is of course expected. Besides a couple "oh crap" moments, which EVERY rally driver faces, he's done a great job. One stage in particular at STPR called Rattler will be in my memory forever. It was mostly a downhill stage, very short, and very fast. Carl powered through every corner like a champ and we got to the end and I think we both felt "okay" about it....But after looking at our times it was obvious that it only felt "okay" because he was so smooth that the speed didn't seem that fast...but in fact it was!!! Damn fast, damn smooth. on another stage out there..wilson stage. I thought we were going about 70 because he was so smooth, but upon looking over at the speedo I was shocked to see 110+ kudos to carl for such improvement.....
LULZ Really wish 858 would've been out to help you on SS3, but it is what it is. At least we have time to work on the cars before NT3!
