THE stage at Prescott this year had to be PerkinsView. Witty Tom seemed to get all the attention, but the last stage of the rally was an awesome run for us. PerkinsView is a combination of Perkinsville East (which fans of the rallynotes.com show will remember as one of our best stages last year) and First View. Now, I’ll just say that First View separates the men from the boys. Twisty gravel road on the side of a mountain with lots of exposures. Exposure means: Cliff with no guardrails, or “Don’t go off here as there will be lots of t3h falling.” This year they combined the two stages for a final, flat out, 22 mile dash for the finish.

The stage starts with the sun on our back as we work our way through the 3’s and 5’s. I’m working hard to get a rhythm down and I just can’t concentrate on 2 turns ahead. Christine backs it off for me and as the stage gets faster she has to speed read a couple of times to catch up. I have a good feel for the way this road goes from last year but there is a moment around 3:00 minutes in where Christine calls: “Stay right over crest, 20, right 4, 70.” I think about it and I’m expecting the right over crest then a little bit of a downhill starting to turn into a right hander. I should only need to dig on the brakes a little right? What I got was a crest which went immediately into a hard right. Had I not kept right over crest there – we would have been in the scenery… Upon later review Christine admits that she should have dropped the 20 and called it: “Stay right over crest into right 4.” We normally drop anything less then 40. The notation ’20′ yards/meters is useless to call at 70MPH. In the time it takes to say “Twenty” – you’ve already covered that distance.

That wakes us up and we get focused real quick. Now we’re moving into the faster sections and we will not make a mistake like that again. I start to dig into 4th gear and the speedometer is climbing to a steady 90MPH. I think my 100 last year was wheel spin without a limited slip differential. I think about this only a moment as we fly down into some 5’s and I try to keep the throttle buried in the firewall. Just a few little stabs with the left foot until we get to the “Right 3 don’t cut drop outside – might as well be a hairpin!”

We work our way down and back out of the valley. There is a right hander through a stop sign – which never gets old btw – and we’re into First View. It’s fast, but going this way is a bit of a hill climb so I’ve got to keep up our speed. At 9:10 minutes in there is a right 5 through a cattle guard and up a long hill. It looks smooth on the video but there is one hell of a kick that you have to deal with seconds before threading the needle of the cattle guard posts. We took it flat out, and were able to carry that speed all the way up the hill.

With one mile to go we snake our way up to ‘the cut’. Christine calls out some rocks, but at this point the road is littered with embedded rockadillos. We hit one right on the inside of a rim. It bends and starts ‘whumph’ing’ against the rear trailing arm. It’s loud – but it’s not flat yet. We continue to push and finish the stage. This part of the drama was in the first Prescott video – “Bang On!”

It’s awesome when control workers double check your time. “21:24. Wait… 21? Is that right?!” *frantic re-checking of sums “Yeah. That’s a good time!” Only later do I learn we set 7th fastest. Not bad for a little Dodge Neon ‘eh?

Prescott Rally 2006 – SS14 PerkinsView ‘Highlights’ – 72.7MB WMV
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