Posted Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 2:32am

Friday Night Lights

After the Spectator Stages at the 2012 Oregon Trail Rally Lauchlin O’Sullivan and co-driver Scott Putnam are fifth overall and leading the Super Production category by a second-and-a-half over David Sterckx and co-driver Karen Jankowski. In other words, they have a real fight on their hands! Here’s a Saturday morning update from Putnam.

Basically we got through the Friday stages. The first couple of runs were getting used to the different tarmac tires. We had a little spin on stage one but the time was OK. Then on stage three we were really flying quite a bit faster. But we went a little wide and the rear wheels hit the grass and we went around. The incar must be great though. Lauchlin kept his foot in it and we went around and kept going. We were only down about a tenth of a second to the first time through the stage. We were going much much quicker.

We ran on rallycross tires in the first stages and gravel tires through the last stage going across the grass that immediately got torn up. We were slip sliding through the grass and trying to manage our trajectories the best we could.

Now, the Saturday morning stages will be very busy and could be the separators for the rest of the weekend. We’ll get it right off the bat. The rest of the staes get progressively easier. The whole thing is to make it through this morning. Fir Mountain South we do twice as stages five and seven. On my side of the car it’ll be pretty busy. It’ll be a challenge keeping up to Lauchlin.

The plan is to work for the podium, race and try not to make any mistakes. Everything seems to be going good so far. There are no problems with the car.