Friday
Thanks to a serious rally jones the night before, I go into Friday's stages with some good old-fashioned jet lag and three hours of sleep. And with SRT-4's sheer velocity, I know we're in for a ride. There's the usual "take it easy, find a rhythm" small talk before the start of Stage One. But when the flag drops, I'm all gas. Every ounce of restraint leaves my body through my right foot as I attempt to mash the pedal through the firewall. The SRT-4 makes so much power, it's utterly worthless in first and second gears, leaving two Ditch Witch trenches at every stage start. By third gear it hooks up with relentless, JATO thrust. With that thrust comes beg-for-mercy speed. And air.
Air?
Yes, air. Lots of it. The kind of air that sends rocks and debris flying through hood vents and over the windshield upon touchdown. The kind of air that motivates Coleman to yell "don't try to win it here" between mouthfuls of pace notes. The kind that makes me feel like Colin McRae even if I drive like Donnie Osmond. We finish SS1 without incident. I turn on the hubris. If the rest of the roads are like this, it'll be easy.
They aren't and it isn't.
The drizzle begins to accumulate on the windshield as the sun sets over a rally known for its disastrously long nights. Had we been here 15 or 20 years ago, we would be rallying for three straight days with little-to-no sleep in between. Rally organizers, it turns out, have gotten smarter with time. The thought of sleep-deprived drivers charging down tree-lined roads at 130 mph has a way of curbing the enthusiasm of even the most rally-hardened organizer. We're glad.
The rest of the evening stages change character considerably. The roads go from manageably quick, second- and third-gear turns to blind, perilously fast, fourth-gear sweepers. The surface changes, too. Gone is the somewhat grippy surface of SS1, replaced by hardpack covered with gravel. This combination means failure to keep the car on line will result in a painful yardsale into the tree-lined depths surrounding the road.
It also means that when a "left two" follows a "right six," I get it all wrong and the spectators love it. I analyze this scenario several times at the next service, ultimately determining that it was an anomaly-a call I should have processed sooner, but didn't. My indifference for the edges of the road recurs two more times before the night is over. Thankfully, so does our good luck. By SS8 I'm exhausted to the point of utilizing cruise control-a state my body assumes when it's afraid of what my sleep-deprived brain might do to it. Cruise control gets us through SS8 without incident, albeit 11 seconds slower than our first time over the road.
It's not until after the rally that I find out my teammate, Doug Shepherd, also has a couple driving modes. His modes, however, prove more effective at getting a rally car quickly through a stage. First, he tells me of what he calls "the fast way." The fast way, according to Shepherd, utilizes modest slip angles allowing early throttle application at corner exit. This is how he usually drives. And it's usually fast enough. He has won four of eight events in Group 5 leading up to this, the final race in the 2003 series.
Then, says Shepherd, there's "warp drive." Much like the infamous ludicrous speed of Mel Brooke's "Spaceballs," warp drive is pure stupidity. It's reserved for those special occasions when catching an opponent is absolutely essential, when finishing the rally is second to winning it or when you're running from the evil Dark Helmet. Warp drive, as Shepherd eloquently puts it, means using the inside ditch at every bend to keep the car on the road, thereby thwarting physics and, usually, going faster than Newton's laws allow. We suspect warp drive gone wrong has dire consequences.
We finish Friday 13th overall-up 21 spots from our 37th starting position. However, Shepherd and Gladysz are kicking our asses, putting almost six minutes between us going into Saturday. Where's warp drive when you need it?