Driving Sports

It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.       -Herodotus

Rally Racing is the greatest motorsport in the history of the world. Say what you want about the technology of Formula One or the brute force of NHRA Drag Racing, or even the massive marketing appeal of NASCAR - none of them can touch Rally for its unique combination of human and mechanical challenge, spectator dedication, and authentic racing excitement.

The ten-second riff on Rally is that it involves "Real cars, on real roads, real fast."  That's true, but there's more to it than that. Everything that makes Rally Racing great was on display at the Doo Wop Rally Series in Washington State last weekend. I should know - I was there, with my butt planted in the best seat in the house.

Back in 2004, I was lucky enough to get a chance to co-drive for Matt Tabor of the Tabor Rally Team. Another candidate begged off at the last minute, and I got the call to climb into the silly seat. I said Yes without a second thought and I've stayed in that seat ever since.

The term "co-driver" implies that I have the wheel in my hands from time to time, but I don't. I've driven lots of race cars over the last 20 years, but now I have a special task. My job is to get us where we need to go, read the notes that describe the road ahead to Matt as we race, fix the car on the spot if it breaks, and keep a cool head no matter what happens. I'm a combination crew chief, tactician, and riding mechanic.

I've long since lost count of the number of rallies we've run together, but this Doo Wops represented the start of our fifth year rallying as a team. The Doo Wop rallies are a two-day affair organized by a dedicated bunch of rallyists in western Washington. Formerly a timber and shipping region, the lands around Aberdeen have been in an economic depression for at least the last 30 years, so the annual influx of racers is a critical boost to local commerce. While other parts of the world have been pulling back their support of Rally Racing, we're welcomed in western Washington.

Doo Wops is run each year sometime from mid-to-late February or early in March. The weather's always cold and rainy and occasionally we see snow, but this year the weather had something special in store for us. The harshest Northwest winter in 40 years made a curtain call to offer each rallyist a particular challenge.

Matt and I entered the rally in his 1999 Subaru 2.5RS Impreza. This car races in the Production GT class, against other normally-aspirated AWD cars and the turbocharged Subaru WRX. We're giving up about 60 horsepower to a stock WRX, so it's a long climb to turn in a competitive performance.

But part of the appeal of Doo Wops is that it's a smaller event where grassroots racers can be competitive - there are no national points awarded here and the top teams are busy in other parts of the country. People come to Doo Wops because they like the roads and they want to race. That contributes to the overall low-key atmosphere. The big national rallies arrive in the Northwest in April and May, so Doo Wops is also a great chance to shake the dust off the car and get the teams back into shape before the show comes to town.

We loaded up the car and headed north to Aberdeen on Friday evening, stopping for food along the way and rolling into our hotel just in time to hit our pillows - a well-rested rallyist is a happy rallyist!  The organizers had a late start for us the next day. Tech and registration at 8 AM, and the first car on the road at noon.

The first stage is Blue Slough Road - a paved county road that we close off and race on each year as the opening stage of Doo Wops. Understand, rally cars are designed to maximize traction on bumpy gravel roads, handle jumps, and take a pounding. And they won't let you change tires to run just one stage - so you have to race on Blue Slough Road with your gravel tires, or race the next several gravel stages on your street tires. As we're fond of saying, "You can't win the rally on Blue Slough, but you can sure as hell lose it there."

After Blue Slough, we ran a favorite stage of mine, called Pico. Up in Gray's Harbor county, they pronounce it "Pie-Koh." We run the stage once in each direction, and by the time we're done with that, our rally blood is up. Pico has it all - uphill, downhill, narrow bridges, washouts, slow hairpins and fast runs through the woods.

Pico has been known to bite on occasion, and it was there that our friends Doug Heredos and Dan Brown found themselves out of luck, options, and real estate all at the same time. After bouncing off a friendly tree, they were unable to continue. The Impreza they were driving is fixable, but it will need help you just can't get when you're deep in the woods.

This year we also got our first look at a new stage, called 13 Corners. In fact, the short run on an almost pavement-smooth gravel road offers considerably more than the advertised 13 turns. Snow, mixed with rain, was falling hard as the daylight failed. All rally cars have banks of additional lights for running into the darkness, but we switched ours off because the snowflakes were reflecting glare back at us. We could see better with just our low beams shining.

At the end of the day, we found ourselves sitting about where we expected - in third place behind two turbocharged WRX sedans, but first among the three normally-aspirated cars in our class. But we went to dinner and our beds happy with our performance and looking forward to the second day.

We awoke to snow falling. Now, with the aggressive treads we have on rally tires, you might think that snow is no problem at all for us. You'd be wrong. Our tires are optimized to grab chunks of rock on a gravel road, not to displace fluffy white snow. So the rallyist faced with snow has a Hobson's choice to make - do you change to snow tires and risk a flat on the gravel, or keep the rally tires and risk a slippery ride on the snow?

We had no snow tires, so our decision was easy.

On the way out to the morning's stages, enough snow fell to put an inch on the roadway, and it was here that we had our only real scare of the weekend. A pickup truck came around a bend and, as the newspapers like to say, "crossed the center line" of the road.  That's an understatement. When you see a big old 3/4 ton 4WD Dodge coming at you in full fishtail with a panicked driver at the wheel, it's a bit more urgent than a simple lane violation.

Because I'm here to write this story, you can assume we didn't hit the truck. It may have been the force of my swearing that pushed the truck back into his lane before Matt had to dive for the shoulder. The world will never know for sure.

The first four stages of this day's rally were two stages out and the same two stages back along Smith Creek and Brooklyn Tavern roads. These are fast, sweeping, smooth gravel roads that are well-kept by the logging companies that use them daily. If you want to win at Doo Wops, this is where you have to go fast.

And fast is what we were going when we hit a patch of snow in a shady corner and slid towards the ditch. Ordinarily this is not a problem. You go into the ditch, you nail the gas, you pop back out of the ditch and onto the road. But at this particular corner, there was a log in the ditch measuring about 4 feet in diameter. We rode up on the log and the mud in the ditch grabbed hold of the car. It was a leisurely process, and I had time to think deep philosophical thoughts such as "Well, we're going to end up on our roof. Haven't done that before" and "Oh hell, now we'll have to fix the car."

What did not go through my mind was any fear at all for my own health and safety. Rally cars are built to take abuse, and I was securely belted into my seat and wearing my helmet, my HANS device for neck protection, and my fire suit. So I was able to watch the ground come up to my side window with a cool and collected frame of mind.

After we stopped sliding, Matt asked if I was OK and I assured him I was. I asked after his well-being and he said he was also unhurt. I reached up and turned off the car and we considered our predicament for a moment: we were on the car's passenger side in the mud of the ditch, which put me at the bottom of a car-shaped cave, with the only available door up past the steering wheel and Matt.

But even as cool as we were, there's some urgency when you crash in a rally. You see, rallies are run by starting a new car down the stage every 60 seconds. So when you crash, you've got company coming in something less than a minute. The first rule of rally is that we take care of each other out there, and if you encounter a crashed car, you stop to make sure everyone's OK.  If you're OK, it's your duty to let the next car know you're OK and that they don't need to stop racing to help you.

The cherry of immediacy on this little mud pie is that the same patch of snow that had us for lunch is still there to eat the next guy for dessert. And that could easily turn our little contretemps into an injury accident, so we have to hustle. Matt gets the door open and climbs out with the "OK" sign and a pair of emergency triangles and runs back up the road. He has to warn Lou Beck and Randee Orion, who are coming up fast on our tails. I follow him out the hatch with somewhat less grace a moment after Lou and Randee pass us by with a friendly honk of the horn.

Now we have a minute (just about exactly) to consider our situation. The car's on its side, but that's not a stable position for it. We give it a brief inspection and things don't really look that bad. We've cleared the end of the big log and we're just stuck in the mud. So on a count of three, we give the car a shove and push it back over onto its wheels. Now the car is simply sitting on an embankment with its downhill wheels buried in mud - that's downright respectable in rally!

Part of the reason for this is practical - when the sweep truck comes down the road to collect up the broken rally cars, we want to ask them to pull us out onto the road  so we can finish the stage and stay in the race. That's easier to do if we've got everything ready. The second reason is that we're just the second of four cars from our family-based rally team to pass this point, and we don't want Matt's mother or father to see us with the car looking like it has sustained serious damage. Call that a point of pride.

So we smile and wave as the rest of the rally passes us by, and then the sweep truck does its guardian angel trick and we're back on the road. Our mishap has merely bent a lower suspension arm on the downhill front side, and we arrive at the end of the stage to the applause and cheers of our fellow competitors.

One of the many reasons Rally Racing is the greatest sport ever is the sense of true camaraderie that exists between competitors. Not only does each of us rely on the others to stop and render aid in the worst case, but there is genuine support when a rallyist needs to fix a car out in the woods. For all you know, next time it'll be you, so offers of parts and assistance are waiting for us as we arrive.

Another proverb I like is this one:  "if you save a leprechaun and he offers to make you very very smart or very very lucky, choose lucky."

We were lucky to find that the Washington forest gnomes had placed one of those big heavy gates along a sideroad just where we needed to fix the car. So we broke out our towing strap, tied one end to the stanchion and the other to our bent front corner, and drove backwards a few feet. The strap snapped like a rubber band, but it pulled the wheel back into position and we were ready to race back down the stages.

We lost about 15 minutes by the side of the road, so we said goodbye to our hopes for another podium finish. At our service period, the Tabor pit crew (Barrett Dash of AllWheelsDriven.net, Andy Sharples, and Tim Maple) installed a new control arm (supplied by another team - Steve and Kelly Greer) in 15 minutes. We went back out to finish the day and enjoy the ride on another new gravel stage on Palix Road.

Palix is another one of the best roads in the Pacific Northwest. Rally in the Northwest is about running fast through the forest, occasionally enjoying a fabulous view of the hills and sky, and finding something new around every corner.

On the first running of Palix, it was Matt's brother Mark and his WRX that we found around one corner, sitting upright on all four wheels but hopelessly mired in deep mud. Mark had the tow strap out, so it was our turn to play guardian angel and give him a tug.

Sad to say, we couldn't budge his car - he'd have to wait for the tow truck. And we nearly collected Lou and Randee in the process of trying to pull Mark out. So we took off once again to keep on racing. It wasn't until after the next service that I realized that our class was down to four cars, and Mark's incident put Matt and me back in contention for a trophy.

We ran Palix two more times (once in each direction) and then headed for the awards banquet. Yet another reason why Rally is the best is that when it's all over, everyone gathers for a hot meal and a chance to congratulate the winners. Doo Wops is a grassroots effort, so the banquet is traditionally held in the Oakville Grange Hall. The banquet is a benefit for the Oakville Food Bank, and the dinner is expertly cooked by the ladies who staff the Food Bank. Rallyists make generous donations on the way in and there's never a shortage of second helpings.

The awards started with a special new class - Rally Moto. Rally Moto is run on dual-purpose motorcycles, and the riders are amazing. They combine all the skill of Rally drivers with the boldness required to run these roads without a partner to tell them what's coming. As they presented the trophies, there were a few extras, and the assembled rallyists shouted to the organizers to give every Moto rider an award, then we favored the bikers with a standing ovation.

When the officials got around to our class, Matt and I found that we had once again climbed to third place. After all the tribulations of the day, we beat Mark and his co-driver Nick Taylor by one minute and twelve seconds. Matt and Mark's father Bruce Tabor (and co-driver John Elkin) was the fastest member of our team that day, followed by sister Kristen Tabor and co-driver (and Mom) Janice Tabor.

Overall, veteran Northwest rallyist Carl Jardevall and co-driver Dave Schrenk won the rally in Jardevall's excellent Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. Mark Tabor and Nick Taylor won Production GT on Saturday, and Sunday honors went to Mike Goodwin and Tina Warner in a WRX. Bruce Tabor and John Elkin won Production on both days. Group 2 honors went to Adam Crane and Britta Nielsen in a Toyota Corolla on Saturday, and then to Nate Tennis and Amity Trowbridge in a Saab 99 on Sunday. Group 5 was won by Charles Buren and Mike Milos on Saturday, but every single Group 5 car crashed or broke down on Sunday.

I've raced in just about every kind of motorsport there is, but Rally is where I found the real heart and soul of racing. Sportsmanship, resourcefulness, speed and gravel all come together to make this sport unlike any other currently going.  That's why fans will hike miles into the woods for a 10-second glimpse of cars sliding sideways through the corners. That's why half the competitors trust the other half with their lives. And that's why once you've tried it, there's no turning back.

Photos by Ben Bradley