Tough weekend at Rally Tennessee

Well, we had a difficult weekend at Rally Tennessee.  We have been competitive for the last year on the loose surface rallies and did well last year on the tarmac rallies. Now we need to step up our game on the pavement for the future. We ran a better rally from driver/codriver performance and car set up was on the money, but the lack of power really showed itself. Morris Motorsports did an excellent job of preparation. Brad's driving was right where it needed to be, and I don't think we left much time on the table from a driving crew standpoint. We have been running a 2.4 Mivec 4 cylinder engine that puts out about 150 horsepower. Even though it is a 2.4 Liter engine the class multipliers put this in the big engine class due the variable valve train technology. What this means in reality is we need a turbo to really be competitive with the other cars in the class. SRT4 and other cars with turbos are the true players in our class with closer to 300 horse power. The next few rallies are all loose surface so the playing field should be back to level again. We may need to look at the power plant before the next tarmac rally. In the end it may all be a moot point as we had a shock fail, which put us in a ditch and out of the rally. On with the repairs and on to the next rally. Congratulations to Doug Shepard and Karen Wagner for their overall win in a two wheel drive car, with the Wimpey brothers Josh and Jeremy in a close second in their A2 Golf GTI. Third place was Evan Moen and Billy Elliot Mann in their supercharged Integra Type R.