Lake Superior Rally

Location: Houghton, Michigan, October 17-18, 2003
Details: Leg One; 8 stages, 97.1 stage miles. Leg Two; 7 stages, 37.34 stage miles. 134.44 total stage miles.

Proud successor to the infamous Press-On-Regardless Rally. Run on sandy roads in Michigan's hell-and-gone-from-nowhere Keweenaw Peninsula, LSPR is very quick with this year's winning average speed a remarkable 72.95 mph. Unpredictable and wildly variable weather is an event hallmark.

This should have been an event full of epic battles in nearly every class. OK, Mike Halley had only to cross the start line to claim the Production title but David Higgins, championship in hand, was free to answer any challenge Subaru's Pasi Hagstrom offered up. Hagstrom, of course, was looking to make his mark, win two in a row and finish Subaru's season on a high note. Lauchlin O'Sullivan needed a strong finish to keep co-driver Christian Edstrom (who stopped by the Rally-America.com truck to send his new wife birthday greetings) in second place in the Overall and Open class championships while Ramana Lagemann and Micheal Orr had an outside chance to bump Tim O'Neil and Alex Gelsomino out of third place. John Buffum and Paul Choiniere showed up in the Libra Racing Hyundais and Tom McGeer, with the irrepressible Howard Davies co-driving, dropped down from Canada looking to clinch the North American Rally Cup (a mix of U.S. and Canadian events).

Doug Shepard wrapped up the Group 5 driver's title at Wild West but was tied with Eric Burmeister and trailing Chris Whiteman by one point in the Woodner Cup (Overall 2WD). Whiteman was two points behind Burmeister in the Group 2 chase. The Group N battle between Mark Utecht and Shane Mitchell and the Production GT fight between Valdemaras Maciukevicius and Bruce Davis were just as tight.

O'Neil started first on the road and was immediately slowed sweeping the road for the others in a Focus that didn't want to stop or turn. Higgins' Mitsubishi was also plagued by braking and handling problems, and Subaru's Hagstrom had built a 22-second lead after the first three stages. During the following service, the Mitsubishi crew found a loose wire on the EVO's center differential and the wrong rear brake pads. Problem solved for now. O'Neil wouldn't be so lucky, it took a chance comment about glowing rear rotors the following morning to lead the team to a brake bias problem masked by the Focus's locked center diff. By then it was too late.

Lagemann had an 'altitude' problem on SS1, landing hard and damaging his rear suspension, losing 35 seconds to his teammate before reaching service. O'Sullivan also flew further than expected over a double 'yump', landing hard on the second crest and holing his radiator. Fortunately the leak was small enough the team was able to get through to service with the drinking water they had on board. Burrmeister wasn't so lucky. Up 30 seconds on Whiteman after SS2, he checked under the hood on the transit to SS3. Unfortunately, he forgot to lock the hood pins. A half-mile into 16-mile long SS3, the hood, along with the light pod, blew open. He dropped nearly two minutes to Whiteman. It gets worse. By the time 'Lurch' started SS4, preceding cars had dug a large rut in the soft sand and the Mazda high-centered! Co-driver Cindy Krolikowski's husband Henry was the next car up (first time in 20 years both were entered in the same event but not teamed together) but by the time he had pulled them out Whiteman had gained another two minutes.

Of course, this being the wettest ProRally season ever, the rain started along with SS5. Knowing a championship was on the line, Burmeister was pushing hard through the stage when he slid wide and rolled, landing on the roof after 2 1/2 rolls in the air. The Mazda kept rolling, finally coming to rest on its wheels. With most of the lights gone and the rest aimed uselessly into the sky, the team again relied on husband Henry's help, this guided by his lights to the stage finish. Ten minutes down, Burmeister would go on to set fast time for all of Leg Two but Whiteman would take the class win and the season championship, though as the rally wound down and the excitement built he nearly crashed several times including once at the SS14 spectator area! In PGT, Davis and Lee Sorenson were slowed by turbo problems on Leg One and never really had a chance to catch Maciukevicius. The Lithuanian, with Ernest Bogusevicius co-driving, cruised to a second place finish behind Otis Ditimers and Peter Monin to claim the season championship.

Higgins was fastest through SS4 and SS5 as Hagstrom's had to drive one-handed while he held sixth gear in place. The tranny was changed at the next service and after the back-and-forth battle through Leg One, Hagstrom went to bed thinking he held a 4-second advantage over Higgins with teammate Lagemann another 49 seconds back. At certain time controls, teams are allowed to check in early but they must request their proper minute. Hagstrom woke to find out co-driver Tasinen had made an addition error on the still unfamiliar U.S. time card at the Leg One Finish Time Control and requested the wrong in-time. The error eventually added nearly 4 minutes of road points to the team's score and effectively ended any chance they had of winning.

In Group N, Utecht and Secor were troubled early in Leg One by a transmission that kept popping out of fourth gear and had spotted Mitchell and Donnelly a minute and 19 seconds by the end of the night. "The luck we've had so far this season is swinging the other way," said Utecht before the start of Leg Two's first test, SS9. Part way into the stage he rolled heavily. The Subaru was able to make it to the stage finish but couldn't safely continue and the team retired. Mitchell and Donnelly went on to finish first in class, 10th overall and claimed the Group N title.

With the major title chases decided it remained to be seen who could pull out the win. Canadian McGeer was slowed by problems of his own on Leg One, Paul Choiniere was having fun trying to keep O'Sullivan behind him but taking no chances and John Buffum was finding that wisdom and treachery were indeed no match for youth, especially when you're trying to make service with a broken motor mount. Lagemann made his big error on SS10 when he outbraked himself and went straight through the chicane at the Delaware Mine spectator area. Stopped and unsure of what to do (rules preclude backing up a stage) he eventually decided to keep going. Unfortunately for him, the gaffe caused him to be awarded the day's slowest time through the stage. The penalty cost about a minute and 15 seconds.

O'Sullivan had a scare on SS14 when a driveshaft broke. With open diffs front and rear, that meant he struggled through the stage in one-wheel-drive. Luckily, there was a roadside service before the last stage and long transit back to town and his crew was able to make repairs, which was exceptionally fortunate for his teammates who ended up stuck in third gear for most of SS15. "There's nothing like seeing Daniel [Barritt] on the side of the road waving a strap," said Edstrom. "I gave them a queenly wave, we only passed them by about 10 yards..." before towing the wounded EVO 35 miles back to the final time control. Barritt hopped out, pushed his teammate into the control and the pair won their seventh event of the year. Lagemann ended up in second, a minute and three seconds back but it was enough to take over third in the overall standings dropping O'Neil and Gelsomino to fourth.

With average speeds increasing dramatically, expect to see some changes in next year's fastest events. "I think we're going a little quicker than we need to be," says Tim O'Neil. David Higgins echoed those thoughts, "I'm just praying for Daniel to call a slower corner and he keeps calling another flat corner." On the rev-limiter in sixth, this is a nerve-racking test. With LSPR's mile-long straights, even the redoubtable Dave Coleman says this is too fast. "Some of the stages are just too fast now, with pace notes," says Maine Forest organizer John Buffum. "Like our Wilson Mills stage, I'm not going to run that any more."

First up in 2004, Sno*Drift, Super Bowl weekend.