This was our fourth running at Black River Stages in and around Harrisville, NY. This time I’m back with Kieran as my codriver and we slipped quickly into our working routine. All our in-car videos are posted on Youtube and linked here for your viewing pleasure.

WE had the car well prepared and headed out early Friday for the long tow up to Harrisville where we’ve rented a nice cabin on Lake Bonaparte. Our crew this year is Travis Sleight, Sarah Potter, Thomas Peters, and Jeanette Clausen. We arrive in time for registration, hook up with the crew and find the cabin. Saturday morning is pretty easy as the rally doesn’t start until mid afternoon since it’s running into night stages. Travis and Tom take the car for scrutineering which is passes with no issues while Kieran and I review the in-car video from our previous BRS events as a form of recce, adding performance notes to the supplied Jemba notes. We start with a Parc Exposé in Croghan at the Maple Museum. A chance to relax before the race, meet some fans and catch up our rallying friends.

Kieran and I are off to a brisk and satisfying start on stage1 (Texas) and I think I’m in the groove early. Stage 2 is the long Jerdan Falls stage with a few jumps and kicks. A fun stage with a fast “don’t lift!” pass through a narrow bridge with jump. I’m feeling confident. The third stage is the short 3 mile Tidd stage which this year has a major water splash due to beaver activity near the end. About a mile in I get the car a little over rotated on Right-4 and run off the stage straight towards a large tree. I manage to get it stopped with a gentle tap of the trunk but it was our first moment of the event. I get back on stage but we’ve lost a few precious seconds. We continue on and blast through the water splash with gusto. XXX posted the picture below declaring us Top Splash of the event since we made the biggest splash of all the cars. We go for our first service and the car is in pretty good shape. They check over the car, clean it up and mount the lights since dusk is approaching and we’ll likely be in the dark before the next service.

We repeat the first three stages again as darkness descends. We have a good run though Texas. Stage 5 is cancelled and we transit it due to bicyclist on stage discovered by one of the zero cars. The second pass through Tidd is uneventful this time but it’s full dark now. Back to the crew for our second service and again the car seems in good shape.

Back out for another run of the same three stages but stage 7, Texas, is our undoing; at least in terms of getting any sort of decent finishing position. About a mile or so into the stage I lose traction on a Right-4 and run off the stage to the left. This time there are no tress to hit but I get high-centered between some rocks and stuck hard. We lose 12 minutes waiting for sweep to arrive and pull us free. We continue and finish the stage but are disappointed. The car seems OK though, maybe a few fresh dents in the skid plate - a sturdy little car is our Focus. We push on through the third runs of Jerdan Falls and Tidd. We finish at about 11:00PM and rest up while Travis and Tom prep the car for Sunday’s stages.

We are so far back in the field that we have no chance of actually making up the time to a podium position so we decide to just have fun with the remaining stages. Sunday starts with a Parc Exposé at the Scenic Overlook in Harrisville. The cars run the Goose Pond In and Out stages while the RallyMoto bikes do Jayville In and Out. So our first stage of the day is SS12 Goose Pond In with lots of jumps that I take more aggressively that intended but the car is quite happy with them The Hotbits suspension seems to be holding up well to the punishment. It was on these stages last year that we broke the DMS suspension that we were running then. The run out of Goose Pond (which is a turn-around stage) on stage 13 is event free but we still have a few interesting jumps.

We then go to run stages 10 and 11, Jayville In and Out but stage 11 is transited due to civilian traffic on stage. So we only get to run the Jayville Out stage. It is very technical and twisty in the early parts and we cross several railroad crossings.  Stage 14 is cancelled and we return to our first and only service back in Harrisville. Fortunately there’s not much for the crew to take care of in this service.

The remaining 3 stages of the day are a repeat of the Jayville In and Out stages and a successful run through the previously cancelled Fullerville stage. We run our bumper cam on stage 16 that can be seen in the embedded video on the in-car video. We’re following a Subaru that is burning a considerable amount of oil leaving huge clouds of smoke. About one third into the stage I get a little wide and put the car up on the bank. Luckily we recover with no issues.

Except for our 12 minute delay on day 1 we are pleased with our performance. Of course we came last in class since we could not recover from that big time loss. Many thanks to our crew for a great job. We are leaving our rally car and trailer with Jeff Brady in Croghan and plan to pick it up on the way to our last rally of the year and our first rally in Canada at Rallye de Charlevoix in Quebec.