Over the past 3 years, many have followed the building and preparation of the rallynotes.com – Dodge ‘Rally’ Neon. The car is finally ready to race in time for the 2005 Gorman Ridge Rally on August 20th. Held on the roads north of Los Angeles in the Hungry Valley Off-Road Recreational Park and Angeles National Forest, the Gorman Ridge Rally is close to home for the team based in Irvine, CA. It offers a healthy ‘first test’ of the car with 12 special stages.
The rallynotes.com Dodge Neon is driven by Kristopher Marciniak and co-driven by Christine Wittish. Kristopher is originally from New Hampshire and has a background in ice racing, autocross, and rallycross. Christine is originally from New Jersey and has competed in several ‘time speed distance’ rallies. They both completed the California Rally Series Rally School, and are currently 2nd in class in the CRS Rallycross Championship.
“My goal is to finish the rally. I’m going to take a steady pace and drive smooth. I want to finish and get used to the motions,” remarked Kris. Not that they aren’t used to how a rally works. For the past two years they’ve been volunteering to work events and have accumulated a lot of experience at timing controls. Christine said: “I know what to look for and what to have ready for the workers. We shouldn’t get caught handing in the wrong time card, or arriving on the wrong minute.”
Kris speaks about the long term goal of building and racing a Dodge Neon rally car. “There are people that say – buy your first car. And I understand that, but there are a small percentage of us that have the mechanical skills to prepare our own. I look at it as spreading out the payments. It allowed me to learn the car and drive it a lot more then a pre-prepped racer. She’s been on a frozen lake in New Hampshire, to the top of Mount Washington, and on a road trip across the country last December! I’m going to spot any mechanical problems well before we get onto a stage. If something does go wrong I’ll be more equipped to get the car back to service.”
The team is going to get a lot of practice with stage notes, as they are available to all teams running the Gorman Ridge Rally. Normally teams are given a route book, which give less information than stage notes, but stage notes describe the specific types of corners in high detail, and are not always available. The co-driver works with the driver to get a good pace going. Not calling too many corners too soon or too late. “We make notes at rallycross events. I notate the course to Christine and she reads it back when we race it. I only occasionally have to adjust our rhythm. I wanted her to get used to calling notes and spending time in the car. Just like a driver, co-drivers need seat time too,” Kris mentions. “I enjoy having something to do during a rallycross, rather than just balance out the car. I’m really excited that we’ll be able to use notes in our debut rally, and get used to using them from the beginning. I think it will be better than having to make the transition later from just a route book to the greater detail provided with notes,” Christine added.
Kristopher is a computer technician and support analyst working for the Alteer Corporation in Irvine, CA. Christine is a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine in the field of molecular biology and the lab of Dr. Douglas Wallace.
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This weekend we’re headed out to participate in the first Grand Canyon Rally presented by Team Atlantic. This is a straightforward time-speed-distance (TSD) rally. This means that we’ll have to keep it under the speed limit but stretch our navigation, teamwork and timing skills. The goal of a TSD is to arrive at hidden checkpoints along the route exactly on time. The route heads out of Nevada and onto the gravel roads around and through the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We have been told that the route travels along some of the stage roads for Prescott and the Laughlin International Rally.
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.