Event report by Eric Burmeister: Hello all, and welcome to the press notes coverage of the MaxAttack! event at Lake Superior Performance Rally! This is the season finale that will bestow the prestigious Jake Himes Cup upon our most maximum attacker and will see 22 teams fighting for the $5000.00 purse and the bragging rights that come with conquering the "oldest, meanest, and toughest" rally in the United States.
Ben Bradley and myself are both on hand this weekend to make sure we cover the entire MaxAttack! event, dig into the teams' inner workings, and get the stories you crave. These notes will be broadcast here on this Specialstage forum, as well as on our site at www.max-attack.com thanks to our man at the controls, Shenandoah Bennet.
No sense in building this up anymore...you know what's at stake. The deepest fields of rally talent in North America follow this series for the cash, the prestige, and the pure competition that come with every MaxAttack! event. And once again we find ourselves at the end of a great season in the far northern town of Houghton, Michigan, drenched in fall colors and dampened a bit by the weather.
Houghton is a bit of a conundrum. Part old mining town, part modern college town, but all very friendly and the home of various incarnations of this rally dating back over 40 years. Most who have been around the sport think of Houghton as the rightful home of American Rallying. And what better place to host the end of season shootout for an all american rally concept, the MaxAttack! 2WD Series presented by Danza del Sol!
Here we go:
-It's Thursday night and, of course, the rally hasn't started yet, but we were out at the shake down stage at Michgan Technological University's Keweenaw Research Center to see if we could gain any pre-rally knowledge as it pertains to MaxAttack! Several competitors were there for various reasons. Here's what we saw:
-Of course, the pre-rally favorites after their 3rd place finish at the Eastern Round in New England would be Dillon Van Way and Jake Blattner in their #600 Turbocharged Ford Fiesta Rally Car. The car honestly was the fastest thing circulating the gravel test course at KRC, no matter how many wheels were driving it. It looked to this reporter (who has a bit of experience with this sort of car) that the Fiesta actually had less power, but was noticably faster than it was at Maine. Instead of struggling to put the power to the ground, it just went!
-Highest rev limiter award definitely goes to the #37 Honda Civic of Billy Mann and Mary Warren. Billy said the car has a fresh right rear quarter after an encounter with a tree in Tennessee, but after many long hours, it's ready to do battle in MaxAttack!
-Every time we see Chris Greenhouse in his #319 Dodge Neon, we think he's reached the potential of the little yellow car, but today, with codriver Brian Johnson by his side, he showed us again just how far one can go with a simple, reliable rally car. Note to Chris: You're ready for a faster car, mate!
-Steve Brockelman and Dustin Masters may be rank beginners to the sport of rallying, but the vehicle they have chosen for their debut is anything but a rookie. The pair showed up in the same GMC Sonoma pickup truck that US rally legend Guy Light prepared and raced some 20 years ago. Wearing the number 262, the truck looks as if it was prepped yesterday. The pair easily took the most laps around the KRC facility as they came to terms with it's gravel manners and their speed picked up as the team took Rally 101 at the Michigan Tech facility.
-A rather seasoned team and one that has probably 35 LSPR/POR starts between them is Chris Czyzio (pronounced Czyzio) and Jeff Secor. The car is Jay Topping's Volvo 242 wearing the 244 number for this round. The team only made a few rounds of the shakedown course, but we are hoping that Czyzio (sounds like Czyzio) will "become one with Rear Wheel Drive" as he did in the 90s in his Fire Arrow.
-Another "classic" rally car at shakedown was the #510 (what else?) Datsun 510 of Jim Scray and Colin Vickman. The car is always a crowd favorite, and the team was showing their rear wheel drive style out here today, but there was a bit of smoke coming from the tailpipe as the car's lungs reached it's upper registers. Let's just hope she's running a bit rich. Many of us are excited to see the classic rear wheel drive battle between the 510, the Volvo, and the Huebbe Bros.' VW Beetle!
-Brothers Silas and Mattie Himes looked fast in their #535 Honda Civic. Silas says he was trying to manage the variable brake boost that comes from left foot braking with a brake booster while pedalling through the turns, but overall the skills pretty much came right back after a year hiatus.
-An interesting build is the #841 VW GTI of Daryn Chernick and Matthew Conte. The car is a nicely prepared Mk. 2 GTI, but sports a modern TDI turbodiesel under the hood. Nice lightweight shell coupled with a super-torque diesel. Recipe for MaxAttack! greatness? We will find out!
There were a few more that I didn't get stories on, but this should get you salivating for the competition in earnest! Stay tuned and we'll talk to you tomorrow.
-Lurch
