Posted Friday, February 24, 2012 at 2:19am
The crew is still in the top eight and second in class at the event
2002 U.S. 2WD champion Lauchlin O’Sullivan took a few minutes to give us an update during the Friday service period at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood in Steelville, Missouri. O’Sullivan and co-driver Scott Putnam are eighth overall in the event and second in class with three more stages to go on Friday. There’ll be another day of competition tomorrow with the service activity based in Viburnum, Mo.
There was a massive rock in the road on SS1. I’m told it was Ken Block that knocked it out there but I don’t know that. But four of us ran over it. And it totally went under our car. We lost power and our brake at that point. I thought we lost about a minute to class leader Travis Hanson but we only went down about 25 seconds and it was a ten mile stage too. (O’Sullivan and co-driver Scott Putnam are second in the Super Production category in the American championship.)
After the first loop of stages at 100 Acre Wood we are sitting eighth overall nearly a minute in back of Hanson and his father/co-driver Terry Hanson. I think we beat them by a second on the next stage and five seconds on the last stage before service. I’m feeling good about that considering all the problems.
Many of the Super Production class guys are further back than normal because many hit that rock on SS1. We had less power and we weren’t able to fix the problem in service. We’ll have to go the next three stages down on power because of the exhaust problem. We should be able to fix it, though, overnight and be OK for tomorrow.
I’ve heard that many of the fast Open Class guys are having problems with the rocks chewing up their tires. We aren’t seeing that. No issues for us. We’re good.
Our change over from the ice setup to the gravel setup has been fine. Considering all the other troubles we’ve had because of the rock, the setup is fine.
