Rally Tennessee this year spans two days across the Memorial Day weekend but travel to and from the event plus a day for recce and shakedown means we're away for 5 days. We leave Raleigh on Thursday and return on Monday. We're fortunate to have Chris Kilby and Kerry Feng for crew again and they're coming in very late on Thursday (or rather, 4 AM on Friday). Kieran and I arrive in Linden, TN at about 7 PM and register for the event. Express Registration is a blessing and we're done in short order. We unload the car from the trailer and leave it in the Community Center for Chris and Kerry to deal with on Friday. And we park the trailer in Linden too.

All of our in-car video from this rally is available on YouTube!

Kieran and I are up early on Friday to start recce at 7AM. There are new stages to cover and we manage to get two runs through each stage within the allocated time. It's almost as tiring doing recce as it is to race on the stages, especially in our Toyota Sequoia on those very twisty sections. We hook up with Chris and Kerry who have prepared the car and got it through scrutineering. Then head out to run the shakedown stage. We manage to get a single pass through that stage before the EMT is called away and the shakedown stage is canceled. Back to Linden for Parc Esposé and finally to put the car into Parc Fermé for the night then the long haul up to Hurricane Mills to our hotel.

Weather was cloudy on Saturday and off and on showers on Sunday, sometimes very heavy. But not too bad. So grip was interesting as the surface of the road was sometimes hot and dry and sometimes cold and wet. We made some suspension changes to improve handling through the rally and adjusted tire pressures to match the changing road conditions.

Saturday's stages start with the old Tree Farm and Owl Hollow stages and includes the two new stages Tennessee Gas and Roan Airplane. When we finished our first run through Owl Hollow, smoke was pouring from our front brakes. A combination of too much timidity from the driver and new pads and rotors burning off their paint. Tennessee Gas was transited the first time through due to spectator management issues. The organizers decided to cancel the second pass through the Roan Airplane stage so that the stage crew could be moved to cover the longer Tennessee Gas stage. Both the new stages were technical and challenging with Tenneseee Gas having a very tricky tight turn with loose gravel that had to be taken very slowly - we dropped to 15mph at that point! Our fuel management is spot on - we finish the last stage before the mid-rally service with the low fuel warning light on. The other stages ran smoothly and we added the light pod in the last service but only really needed it on the last stage. We're smooth and steady; no unexpected departures from the stage and we didn't clip any of the many chicanes. But that is also reflected in our times, consistently being several seconds per mile slower than other cars in our class. It seems we forgot to install our Mark II Mojo!

Sunday's stages were the more familiar Hohenwald, Short Creek, and Tree Farm stages that we've run in previous years. The spectator spot on Tree Farm degraded after so many passes and rain storms, throwing gravel and mud across the road that it caused quite a few incidents, but we managed to keep the Focus under control (for the most part) on each of the passes. AT one service we spot what we think is a coolant leak and are somewhat concerned and are monitoring the situation on the following stages. We then figure out that it was our air conditioning system that had sprung a leak! Of course we don't run A/C on stage but it is useful on transits and while waiting for stage start. It's not too hot this year at Rally Tennessee and we're happy to lose the A/C rather than have an issue with engine cooling.

Andrew Frick/Ryan Scott the other Focus have been driving extremely well and was leading M2 class after Dan Brosnan had some issues and received some penalties. Unfortunately, Andrew and Ryan were assessed a three minute penalty, unfairly we think, for failing to stop when he passed another competitor that had run off the road. That pushed them down to second place by 14 seconds. They're not pleased. He has filed an appeal.

We end the rally pleased with our third place finish which should keep us in 1st place in the 2009 Atlantic Rally Cup.