The New England Forest Rally has finished, and here are a few MaxAttack! presented by Danza del Sol post-rally interviews, recorded on Saturday night in Parc Expose just after cars checked in to the final MTC.
Chris Duplessis, Driver, #70 Scion XD
BB: How were your last two stages?
CD: They were awesome! We were holding off second place, and I've never driven two stages so hard.
BB: Did you manage to do that?
CD: Yes. We held off Wimpeys and Burmeister for second place.
BB: How was the weekend overall?
CD: It was awesome! MaxAttack!, we were driving flat-out all weekend, we had a little suspension issue, but other than that it was real uneventful.
BB: What did you do to the Scion from the last time it was out at Oregon Trail, for increased performance?
CD: We did a limited slip, lost a little bit of weight on it, but pretty much it's still just a street car XD.
BB: What are your plans for the rest of the season?
CD: We're going to X Games, then the season's over. But we'll be back at Sno*Drift in something.
BB: Are you going to make it to Lake Superior?
CD: We're not sure yet. We'll see.
Lauchlin O'Sullivan, Driver, #90 Dodge Neon SRT-4
BB: How were those last two stages of the New England Forest Rally for you?
LO: We had sun and dust, we just had to keep it on the road and do our thing. We had a good lead by the mid-day, and we just had to cruise, not do anything stupid, get no flats like we did yesterday, and it all worked perfectly.
BB: I haven't seen the scores yet, but I assume you won MaxAttack!.
LO: We won MaxAttack!, and I think we were ninth overall, maybe.
BB: That's pretty good for this field. How do you feel about all that?
LO: It's exactly what we came here to do.
BB: Are you going to make it out to Lake Superior?
LO: We were just talking about that on the transit back. I haven't talked to Don [car owner], but Karen says that Don would, let's say, be interested in doing that. A definite maybe. We'll see.
BB: Were you aware of how tight the battle was behind you on the last two stages?
LO: I was, yes. We got to talk about it on the turnaround stage. I'm so happy for those guys. It's such a beautiful thing. I had a great a great battle with Paul Choiniere here one year. We tied to the second, we both got second place overall. This rally, I don't know why, promotes this stuff. Three cars within eight seconds going into the last stage is fantastic. Good stuff.
BB: Congratulations!
LO: Thanks.
Josh Wimpey, Driver, #213 VW GTI
BB: How were those last two stages for you?
JW: The last two stages were great. We pushed really hard on both of them. The first one, we pulled in front of Lurch [Eric Burmeister] and were about four seconds behind Chris, so going into the last stage all three of us were real close battling for second place. We basically all just agreed to go for broke and Chris got us by two seconds in the end, and we stayed in front of Lurch by six or seven seconds. I don't know who was in fifth, actually.
BB: So how was the weekend overall for you?
JW: It was challenging. We had a lot of adversity we had to come through. It was a great time. We pulled back from, I think at one point on Day One we were 15th in MaxAttack!, and ended up third. We're really happy that we were able to make a charge back.
BB: Do you reckon you're going to make it out to Lake Superior in October?
JW: I'm planning on it.
Eric Burmeister, Driver, #42 Mazdaspeed3
Eric had literally just climbed out of his car, and to say he was pumped up is a bit of an understatement.
BB: Tell us about those last two stages.
EB: It was awesome! We go into the last two stages, and there's like 15 seconds separating Chris Duplessis, then it was me, and then Josh for second place. So we go in there, and we're driving ditch-to-ditch. We get to the turnaround, and it's Chris Duplessis, 4.2 seconds to Josh, 4.2 more seconds to me. So now it's 8.4 seconds from second through fourth in MaxAttack!. Ditch-to-ditch back out, and it would up being the same exact thing: Chris just a couple seconds, Josh just a couple seconds, and then me. So it wound up Lauchlin O'Sullivan, who's on his own planet, I don't even know where he's from, then Chris Duplessis, Josh, me in fourth, and I'm not sure of fifth yet. It may be Greg Healey, it may be the Greasecar guys. They were doing well too. We'll see. I don't care! I don't care that we got fourth. I am so amped that MaxAttack! brought the competition and created the show that it created here. It was awesome!
BB: So it was a pretty successful weekend for you all in all?
EB: Yes, very much so. We fought back. We were three minutes down yesterday, last night. When we put this car in the garage we were three minutes down from Chris and Dillon and those guys. We freakin' fought back, it was awesome.
BB: Are you going to make it out to the finale at Lake Superior?
EB: No way I won't make it. I will definitely be there. That's my home rally. MICHIGAN!!!.
Greg Healey, Driver, #280 Datsun 280Z
BB: So how did the last two stages go for you? I heard your car got a little noisier by the end.
GH: Yeah, we had our exhaust come apart on the second-to-last stage, and we were still struggling with the clutch. We had bled it at the last service, thought it was good, but we were having a problem getting gears. We ended up running pretty much both stages all in third, trying to maintain some speed, and lost some time through there. Hopefully we maintained fifth place.
BB: Would you rate it a successful weekend?
GH: Oh yeah, we drive the car on the trailer under it's own power, it's always a successful weekend.
BB: Is there any chance that you might make it out to Lake Superior?
GH: There's a small chance. Brian and I are in discussion now. He's starting a new job shortly, so we don't know if he'll be available, but we'll see.
BB: So do you find the spectators really like the old rear-wheel-drive Datsun?
GH: We got a lot of thumbs-up, I'm not sure if it's for the Datsun or for the mohawks we were running, but it's all good, man.
Rob Sockalexis, Co-Driver, #689 Subaru Impreza
BB: How did the last two stages go for you?
RS: The last two stages were challenging. They were really fast, it was getting dusty, the dust was lingering. On the way out on the last stage we lost our intercom for the last two miles, so I had to yell at my driver for all of his notes. It was a challenge, but we made it through.
BB: You mentioned that you are fairly new to rally and to co-driving. How did this weekend help you learn some new skills or improve upon the ones you had?
RS: These faster roads… The first two rallies we've done were slower speed rallies, twisty and technical. This one was flat-out. It taught me to read faster to try and keep up with him, and try not to fall behind.
BB: So overall would you term the weekend a success?
RS: Totally. We're here at the finish line. We succeeded.
Martin Walter, Driver, #22 Nissan 240SX
BB: How were the last two stages for you?
MW: Well, we were true MaxAttack!. Flat out. I don't know, I think we calculated that we had three minutes to catch up on those two stages, to make it into the top five. But I think we calculated wrong. We didn't do it anyway. But we had a riot.
BB: Would you view this as a successful weekend?
MW: Oh yeah, for sure! We had fun, and that's what we rally for. It's not for the fame and glory and the prize money.
BB: What's the next event for you? Are you going to do one back up in Canada soon?
MW: Actually, our next event is Targa Newfoundland. We're going to completely rebuild the car for that.
BB: I've wanted to do that for years but haven't quite had the chance.
MW: Me too! The car's pretty much used up right now. We've got ball joints wobbling, and strut bushings wore out, and suspension bushings wore out. All our previously-experienced tires are all wore out and bulging, and we bent three rims. But we didn't have any flats. And we had a good time.
Jim McClelland, Driver, #724 Toyota MR2
BB: How did the last two stages go for you?
JM: It was actually pretty good. We had a few struggles. The suspension started to get pretty soft on us. The stages worked out real well for us, they were fast and flowing, it was a lot better than Stages 9 and 10 for us. We kept our speed up. I'm really interested to see what our final times turned out to be. I know that from two years ago, when we were here in '08, I'm sure that we had to shatter all of the times that we did before. The car handled great, the stages were great, the notes were real good, Darlene did a great job co-driving… We made the finish line on Day 2, which is totally awesome.
Jeff Secor, Co-Driver, #244 Volvo 240
Recorded outside the Foggy Goggle Lounge, prior to the start of the awards ceremony.
BB: You and Ian didn't make it through the day today. What happened?
JS: You know, kids these days, they just don't listen. You tell them, "No cut!" and they still think they can cut. There's a big piece of the Canadian Shield there, and it blows the right front. My side of the car, even!
BB: Could it be any other way?
JS: No. He'll do it again too.
BB: Was it a good weekend, other than that little incident?
JS: It was a great weekend. The kid's got talent. It was a lot of fun.
BB: When were you last in a rear-wheel-drive rally car?
JS: Ten years ago. And I don't know why I got out. I had too much fun this weekend.
Jim Perrin, Driver, #716 Jeep Commanche
Reporting on his DNF, via Internet:
On transit from 5 to service, we noticed that the Jeep was smoking. We pulled over to help Kristen Przybysz. She had blown a wheel cylinder, so I was going to clamp off the brake line with a pair of vice grips. While jacking the car up, we noticed that the strut flopped out because she destroyed the top hat. Well, we got her on her way back to service, and when we turned our attention back to our car, we were bone dry on coolant and figured we blew out the water pump, and then the head gasket. So we got a tow back to our motel, where we spent until 3 am replacing the head gasket and water pump. We let it sit overnight for the RTV to cure, and had a tow back up to Sunday River for the start of Day 2. Waited until 15 minutes before our out time to fill it with water, just to find out we spun a rod bearing. And that did us in. The truck felt great on 4 and 5. I was really looking forward to the rest of the event. This was supposed to be our last event for the season, but after all of this, we might hit up LSPR to make up for it.
MaxAttack! would like to thank the following for their assistance in making it possible to be at the New England Forest Rally:
The Danza del Sol winery in Temecula, California
Ted Goddard, Tim O'Neil, and the entire NEFR Organizing Crew
Rally America
The participating competitors
Please remember that MaxAttack! t-shirts are available for purchase at the Rally America store, http://www.rallyamericastore.com
