Billy Irvin, Co-Driver, #649 Honda CRX
Stage 5 started off great, we were making good time, about a mile and a half in we lost third gear, did our best to not lose much time. With about a mile to go in the stage we lost all remaining gears, pulled over, and that was our rally unfortunately. Every stage up to then we seemed to be getting faster, making some time up from the first two stages where we lost a little bit on the front-runners. We were definitely in the pack and ready to move up.
Karen Wagner, Co-Driver, #52 Dodge SRT 4
It's going good, but the problem is the dust. The dust is hellaciously bad. It's so bad you can't see anything at all, so you have to slow down. This last stage was actually pretty slippery on top of it, and there was a lot of "I gotchas!" I know they haven't run this Bob Lake in a long time, and it's definitely a challenge.
Doug Shepherd, Driver, #52 Dodge SRT 4
BB: You seem to have done a little body re-arrangement on the left rear of your car. What happened?
DS: I think it was a Right 4 on the last stage. They warned you about a tree on the inside, but not one on the outside. The road just narrowed and I was a little early turning in, so I needed too much road at the exit and here was this tree. It was all I could do to get the front end and most of the car past it. It was a real close encounter that wasn't much fun.
BB: How has the rest of the evening been going for you other than that?
DS: Well, we've had a long day. We weren't making proper boost earlier through the day, we were down to about half the boost the car normally runs at, and that's made it a bit of a chore to drive. In the last service we found a few things and fixed it. Then it was like a whole new car, it was really pretty quick. Maybe I needed a little more getting used to it than the four miles before I kissed that tree.
Lauchlin O'Sullivan, Driver, #90 Dodge SRT 4
The evening has been quite interesting. It seems like the rallying is beating me up pretty good. Just name it, it's happening. Really the biggest problem right now is it seems the car is running well and we haven't had any major problems, but the flat put us so far back that we're running with slower guys in the dust. It's kind of keeping our pillow there. When there's no dust, on the long stage I think we beat Doug by a couple seconds. But when there's dust, he and the first car are just scooting on everybody. I thought I was going to catch them at night, but because of the dust there's just no way I can do it, especially where I am, at sixth on the road. It's just killing us.
Brian Johnson, Co-Driver, #319 Neon
The evening stages are not too bad, other than the dust. We gave up a bunch of time to Zedrils on the last pass through, so we're kind of consolidating our position right now. The car's running well, the service crew is just doing a quick bolt check, but we're ready to get back out and hit the last two.
