Finishing their first rally is what the rallynotes.com team came to Gorman to do. They did exactly that with style. Without getting stuck in several potential sandy areas and without any problems forcing them to stop on stage, they finished 20th out of the 25 cars that completed this tough event. “It worked out great. I started to slowly find the ability of the car while Christine and I acclimated to driving at decent pace with notes. You can’t try to push yourself to the max if your car and your co-driver aren’t ready and I wouldn’t want to overdrive the car with the notes if I wasn’t comfortable,” said driver Kristopher Marciniak.
The service crew consisted of friends and volunteers. “The crew was awesome! I felt like a movie star every time we came into service!” said Co-Driver Christine Wittish. Ryan Tilder served as Team Manager and John Black was the Service Crew Chief. Cyndi Stivers and Kaiser Chen dug in to help wherever they could. Over the course of 4 service stops they repaired and checked a laundry list of items ranging from air in the tires to re-attaching a loose battery box. “It’s not just the team inside the car, it’s the whole team ready for you at service that lets you finish the rally,” remarked Kris.
“Gorman served as a great starting point for learning everything you need to do as a co-driver, and for learning notes. I was a little overwhelmed with them at first – there were a lot of tight turns and cautions to highlight – but with the revised rally format there were really only four sets I needed to go through. I had a great time, and I’m excited about our first rally finish,” commented Christine.
The team will have the car back out this weekend for a CRS Rallycross ‘points event’ in San Bernardino. “I still want the rallycross championship, and I’m not going to give that away just because I started to stage rally the car.” It will continue to be a good test of the Rally Neon’s ability on dirt.
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This is one tough rally that I’m proud to say we finished as our first. I certainly wasn’t setting any top stage times, but I wanted to drive the car home and that’s what we did. We placed 20th overall (out of 25 finishers).
On Thursday night, Christine convinced me that we should head out to San Bernardino and rallycross ze’Neon. With really not that much left to do with the car, I agreed. My cold and subsequently Christine’s cold moved in on Friday night to make it a close call. My head only started to clear with the sun at 9:30 on Saturday morning.
As I may have mentioned – the DV port in My Sony Handycam finally destroyed itself. The camera has a rock chip taken out of the lens from Maine Forest Rally and the zoom controls make a crunchy sand sound when operated. This camera will live out the rest of it’s days strapped to a rollcage. The only way to get the video off the tape is to buy another camcorder…
+ ($380 camera for $70) = 
“You’re not going to let a little Neon beat you, right?” I smiled. “I was having fun out there!” He replied. We talked about the possibility of the FWD cars winning an event like this as it was pretty technical and not nearly enough room for the EVO to ‘stretch it’s legs.’ Leon is a great guy, and I’ve seen him run rallies for the last few years, so it’s cool to get to know someone you’ve looked up to. (