Portland, OR (October 27, 2007) – The final round of the new MaxAttack! Triple Crown Rally Series has finished its first night at the Lake Superior Performance Rally, and there is plenty of drama with one day remaining in the event. With eight stages on the Keweenaw Peninsula remaining to test competitors, including the famous Brockway Mountain, the Jake Himes cup for the season championship, and $8,000 in prize money, are all up for grabs.
Michigan-based driver Doug Shepherd, along with co-driver Karen Wagner, is presently leading the MaxAttack! contenders in a potent Dodge SRT-4. But Shepherd and Wagner are not having it all their way, as another SRT-4, that of Minnesotans Cary Kendall and Scott Friberg, is less than 24 seconds behind after the rally’s first eight competitive sections. It is close on the stages, though, as 20 seconds of this margin are due to a penalty.
Triple Crown Rally Series leaders, the Ford Focus team of Kyle Sarasin and Mikael Johansson, suffered driveshaft failure on the very first special stage and dropped back to eighth place. Their closest competition, the Mazdaspeed 3 of Eric Burmeister and Dave Shindle, is presently running fifth; if the standings remain the way they are at the overnight break, Sarasin and Johansson would still win the inaugural Jake Himes Cup by a margin of 19 points to 16.
Burmeister and Shindle, meanwhile, are engaged in a tight battle for fourth with the VW Rabbit team of Tom and Don Burress. The Burress brothers towed all the way from Washington state to participate in their second MaxAttack! round. After a disappointing result in Oregon, the team is doing exceptionally well on their first rally outside the Pacific Northwest.
Holding on to third in the MaxAttack! race after the first day is the Ford Mustang of Minnesota’s Mark Utecht and Indiana-based co-driver Rob Bohn. Always a crowd favorite in the rumbling, gravel-kicking Mustang, Utecht exemplified the spirit of rallying by towing one of his fiercest rivals, the Kyle Sarasin and Mikael Johansson Focus, after the team’s driveshaft failure on the first stage.
Holding on to sixth place is Dave Cizmas and Matt Himes in a Volkswagen GTi. It has to be an emotional event for Himes, as the MaxAttack! Triple Crown Rally Series championship trophy is named in honor of his brother Jake, a co-founder of MaxAttack!, who passed away in September following a battle with cancer.
