Note:
In order to be considered a finisher, the team must
pass at least one control in each leg. Those that
didn't are listed as DNF (Did Not Finish).
Thunderbird
Rally, February 6-7 1999 Official Results by Paul
Westwick
First of all, I'd like to give a big thank-you
to our sponsors, Nokian and Kal Tire, for the
donation of a set of Hakkas for first overall,
to Wilkinson's Automobilia for some neat prizes
and tireless work promoting the event, and
to ABTCI for the new WCRA web site and for those
fabulous series decals.
Thanks
are also due to all of our control officials/photographers
and mapping crews: Andrew Dobric, Leslie
Tuck, Tony Latham, Ron Hall, Leszek Brykajlo,
Marek Kik, Greg and Nora Hightower, Brian and
Tina Thomlinson, Roy Lima, Adrienne Lang, Jim
and Jenna Reid, Becky Tilston, and Scott Trinder.
I'm sure everyone joins me in thanking our
fabulous sweep crew, John and Linda Mawhinney,
who were assisted on Day One by Russ Huntoon.
Without all of these people, I'm sure I would
go mad.
It was obvious even before the start that this
was going to be one of the toughest Thunderbirds
in recent history. Near blizzard conditions on
the Coquihalla highway, with the encroaching snowbanks
having reduced it to one lane over the passes,
meant that it was a bit of a challenge just to
make it to the Merritt start. Many of the competitors
were delayed several hours by an accident, because
it took highways that long to plough a new
path around the wreck! 39 crews made the start,
making it the best attended TBird since 1973,
with crews coming from various parts of BC, Alberta,
Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Maine.
Day
One: Saturday, February 6, 1999
The
first regularity is generally supposed to be a
gentle introduction, a small gift to the drivers
to let the navigators figure out which was
is up. Fresh powder on the road ensured that it
would not be so this year! Despite lower speeds
than in the past, Kane Valley proved the undoing
of many crews, with at least six planting
their cars in the snowbanks. Most were extracted
and got back on their way, but the Alfa Romeo
Berlina of Bill Westhead and Alan Barnes retired
due to what Tony Latham called "a typical Italian
electrical problem: they hit a tree and
knocked the top off the distributor!" Aside from
some bodywork, the car is OK, and they drove it
home, vowing to return with more modern snow tires.
The wierdest DNF in Kane Valley was the Porsche
911T of Martin Wilson and John Rapson. They buried
it well enough in the snow that neither door would
open, and had to climb out the windows. To do
that, John handed his instruction-laden
clipboard out the window and it got placed in
the back of the checkpoint vehicle that had stopped
to help them. Once they were extracted, off went
the checkpointers, instructions and all.
All that remained was for Martin and John to drive
to Kelowna and start the festivities early. Needless
to say, a few other crews also bypassed large
sections of Day One.
On
into Kentucky and Sunset, the deep snow continued
to slow the cars down, up the junction where course
opening found it just got too deep to continue.
The crews were eventually corralled and sent back
along a bypass route, losing one regularity in
order to get back on schedule by Penticton. Into
the dark, past Idabel Lake, around the access
road to Big White, back towards Kelowna on McCulloch
road, and then a final loop up Aberdeen
Lake and down to Winfield.
We
left all sorts and shapes of indentations in the
snowbanks, and not all of them right side up!
The novice crew of Taun Chapman and Kelly
Watkinson (in Taun's wife's Audi 5000 Avant) were
gradually improving their scores, getting closer
to ideal time until they misjudged a corner in
Aberdeen, went through the snowbank and
down the embankment, ending up not quite upside
down, but definitely not right side up either.
The crew got out and climbed up the 15 foot bank
to the road to put out their triangle and wave
at the remaining competitors. The next morning,
the BCAA tow truck, along with a huge log bundler
machine managed to get the car back to the road
without further damage. After cleaning the ice
out of the distributor, they managed to
fire it up and drive home with all of the glass
still intact.
By
the end of the first day, last year's winners,
Peter Hill and Shawn Bishop, in their Eagle Talon
were leading with 39 points. In a tie for
second were Satch Carlson and Russ Kraushaar in
the BMW 325ix, and John Fouse and Dennis Wende
in the Subaru Legacy, with 53 points each.
The
traditional battle for historic between Ted Wilkinson's
Cortina and Martin Wilson's Porsche was off, but
by the end of the first day, they clearly had
new rivals: Byron Meston and Mark Ward, in the
Datsun 510 (with those amazing skinny tires
with the big studs!). Byron and Mark finished
the day leading the class with 195 points, over
Mark Viskov and Malcom Muir, in another Cortina,
with 381. Ted Wilkinson and Neil Prescot
were third in class with 410, just ahead of Mike
Welland and Gord Passmore, in the BMW 2002 with
415, and Marcel Chichak and Rod Johnson in the
Mini Cooper with 426.
Calculator
class saw Steve Brown and David Glassman, in the
BMW 325ix, finish the day with a strong lead over
Steve Richards and Gary Reid, in the Toyota Starlet,
194 points to 339. Behind them, Scott Henderson
and Mike Beyer brought in their RX7 in with 490
points.
Paper
class (or do I mean Tabor class?) was lead by
Matt Tabor and Chirs Hale, in the brand new,
hasn't-even-made-the-second-payment-on-it, Subaru
Impreza 2.5RS, with 544 points.
In
Novice class, David and Matt Rennie, driving the
Ford Explorer, finished the day well clear of
their field, with 237 points. They led over
Andrew Ralph and Matthew Powell, in the Mk I Cortina,
who finished the day with 574.
With
all of the extraction work, sweep didn't make
it to the hotel until after midnight, and suddenly
an 8:30 start for Day Two looked very early indeed.
(Not to mention for the officials who were up
until 4:00am fixing the scoring software
and planning where to put the Day Two checkpoints.)
Day
Two: Sunday, February 7, 1999
By
morning, we had a few retirements announced: The
Saab Sonett of Teresa Davenport and Cheri Huntoon
was having ignition problems and decided to head
back, rather than risk the second day. The 53
Ford Zephyr of Howie Wong and Ken Nickel had lost
a belt, and the Sunbeam Imp of Aart Van der Star
and David Cohen retired with gearbox trouble.
John Nispel and Ed Storer, in the Celica AllTrac,
had a major stuff on Aberdeen - no damage, but
with all of the earlier off's, they had to wait
a long time for sweep, and decided not to
run Day Two. (Note to Andrew: I don't know why
Sigi and Peter Wolff retired - car 24, nor Chris
Plaine and Lita Joy Robinson - Car 23)
Back
up to Winfield, through Beaver Lake, we were again
into loose powder snow, as the checkpoint scores
show. Day Two speeds seem to have been a little
more acheivable, though, even leaving enough
time for car 1 to turn around and take some photos
of the ostrich farm at the end of Trinity Valley.
If the regularities were more reasonable, the
simple transit down highway 5A wasn't, as most
crews found themselves in the midst of a
blizzard, with enough wind to throw the Suzuki
Swift of Dave Page and Wayne A'Court off the highway
and down the hill! The car stayed upright and
undamaged, but was too far off for sweep
to recover. A tow truck was called and they eventually
made it home under their own power.
Just
in case anyone thought that Day Two would be a
breeze, the final regularity fixed that. 36 km/h
proved rather difficult to maintain on such
a narrow road, with the depth of snow and very
little in the way of protective snow banks beween
the road and the exposures. It was bad enough
that some crews chose to put on chains.
In an act of poetic justice, even the rallymaster
(yours truly) was drawn into the ditch! Once
stopped, it took a lot of pushing to get the first
few 4 wheel drive cars up the last hill. Eventually,
about half of the crews had to turn around
and go back to the start of the regularity. Of
course, on their way back, they were stopped by
the extraction of Patrick
Richard and Ian McCurdy's Subaru Impreza
2.5RS. They had made a 90° right some
50 metres before the road did, just in front of
the only checkpoint in that section. In
the end, with so many problems, the last regularity
wasn't scored.
Finally winding into Merritt exhausted, Peter
Hill and Shawn Bishop had maintained their lead,
to finish with 56 points, over Satch Carlson and
Russ Kraushaar with 61.
Note for reading the checkpoint by checkpoint
scores:
Above
each column is the name of the regularity and
the position of the checkpoint in km. Each team
has two numbers at each control. The upper
number is your raw difference from perfect time
in seconds, with "E" for early and "L" for
late. Below that is the resulting score. Note
again that the maximum score per control
is 300 points, and the maximum per regularity
is 600. The scores are totalled across one page,
which is generally more than one regularity.
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