The Thunderbird 2010 (car #8, Saturday)
Jul
2010
It’s only now, ten days after the rally, that my heart has slowed enough to allow access to a coherent memory of the event. The driving challenge of The Thunderbird varies year-by-year, in pace with the snow cover on the roads. Before the 2010 running, we saw pre-run photos that suggested manageable levels of the white stuff, and the measuring teams’ reports posted to specialstage conformed; all the signs pointed to “one of the gentler Thunderbirds” (in the words of the Steward after a pre-running of the course). Well, t’was not so — and that we thought it would be so, was just our pride and hubris. Late last year, after Totem, on this forum, I predicted that “some team” wasn’t far away from zeroing both days of a BC Winter rally. With renewed humility, I’ll admit that I thought we might be that team — and that the rally would be The Thunderbird. . the running figure is the navigator, deploying the warning triangle. . . . . . don’t see the driver moving yet. . . . . . and there’s a control car just after the bridge. The bottom line was all that you would wish: To our great relief, driver and co-driver were okay; and the control car, skippered by an AlCan veteran, extracted the competitor car once the rest of the field had passed; and (to tell the truth) had the car in front of us not gone off there, we might well have: I was driving hard. Let us give a moment of thanks for the happy endings. Aside from “absence of anyones’ injury”, driving the car home is a primary goal. So, thereafter, we unwound ourselves, and took a time dec, and plowed on. Hubris -20. Snow there was on section 5, more snow than ANYBODY wanted. We curled back up the same approach for section 6 on Saturday, and no one mourned when we were given an “L at Stop” rather than the “Acute Right at Stop” that’d led into the travail. Saturday night’s scores looked like the old Thunderbird scores: leader at 14 points? Yep, that makes sense. No ties, either. Drivers and co-drivers had good things to say about the locations of controls… “It’s how you get separation in the Unlimited class — put controls just after the hard bits”.
February 18th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
That section on Saturday was, for me, the toughest I’ve yet driven. Picking the right spot to make up time was definitely a challenge.
Congrats on an excellent job, only one point behind teammates Jeff and Marvin
February 19th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Add another Hubris +1, Marinus. After the corrections to day one scores, we were indeed at 14 points. But lookee there. One car had 13 points. That was you and Renee.
Full marks for the weekend, sir. You made us sweat every step of the way and it was only luck that ended up with us pipping you by one point when the weekend was over.
That 72 section on Saturday was indeed challenging. I’m not sure if it was toughest I’ve ran in (as there was no fog) but it was definitely in the top five. It wasn’t the deepest snow we’ve seen but it was HEAVY and steering was very difficult, especially at 72. At one point I was 40 cents late, struggling to keep the car pointed vaguely the right direction. I can only image what it was like in an 80’s one wheel drive car. Mass appreciation to you, Dan.