Perfect weather, perfect roads, perfect competition! Rally West Virginia ran seven stages on Friday and 12 more on Saturday. Some challenging, some rough, but all fun!

Our crew this year is Kevin Allen and his friend Liz and Kendt Eklund all from our home region around Raleigh, NC. Kendt joins us early Thursday morning for the ride up. The rally car is in Staunton, VA receiving some care and attention from our good friend Marcel Ciascai (who should be crewing for us at Black River Stages). We arrive in Staunton around noon, grab a bite to eat, load the car on the trailer and head on to Elkins, WV. We’ve been advised to take the “flat” Route 33 over the mountains but we’re still burning brakes and sometimes crawling on the steep and twisty roads. However, we arrive safely without breaking the Explorer and check in at the high school for registration then on to the airport for scrutineering. Marcel has done a great job and the car breezes through the safety inspection. While waiting for Kieran, Kevin and Liz at the high school I’m interviewed by a reporter/cameraman from a local TV station and appear later on local television. Members of the Becze family, wearing USUK Racing shirts were there and also interviewed.

In-car video from each stage is linked in the story below and indicated: . We are using QuickTime which can be downloaded from here if you need it.

Friday morning is easy as the rally doesn’t begin until lunchtime so we make final preparations on the car and establish our service bay at the airport.

Graveyard Twins, SS1  (4.34 Miles) starts the day. Relatively cool and slightly damp with a few rough spots. About half way in we come across the rally’s first victim, a Subaru on it’s roof but the team seem OK. We press on. We’ve brought along our times from last year’s rally and are pleased to find significant improvement.

Stage 2 is Akropolis Right (3.59 Miles) a new stage that we’ve not seen before. Short but smooth and fast with a couple of tight turns.

We repeat Graveyard Twins for SS3 improving on our first run by 22 seconds. We’re hoping to keep up with Hampton Bridwell and Josh Katinger who are currently leading the Rally Spec Focus championship but we’re trailing by a few seconds on every stage.

Stage 4 is Twin Graveyards (5.06 Miles) which is the reverse of stages 1 and 3. In a previous transit through the stage a local EMS ambulance had a soft roll off the stage which you can just make out in the video just over half way through. Except for some pride, no-one was hurt fortunately. Soon after that point the audio feed from our intercom to the camera fails so there is no more intercom audio for the rest of the day.

Akropolis Right is repeated for SS5 and we shave two seconds off the first time through.

We run SS6, Twin Graveyards again this time taking another 14 seconds off our previous run and just 8 seconds behind Hampton & Josh.

Stage 7 is Long Turbodawg (7.12 Miles) mostly fast and smooth with a few tight and soft hairpins. We finish that stage 20 seconds back from Hampton and nearly 1.5 minutes overall.  However we’re in 9th place for the Big Lime Stages and still in the game. Back to Elkins for a final service and to prepare the car for Moneton Stages.

SS1 is Adolph Expressway (3.77 Miles) and the roads are a little damp and seem smoother but the first mile or so is a slow uphill. The downside of the mountain is faster but with more rocks and a couple of cautions on downhill hairpins. We come in 23 seconds behind Hampton with Andrew Frick and Ryan Scott (the other Rally Spec Focus car) nipping at our heels just 8 seconds back.

Uber Deutschland (5.30 Miles) is stage 2 and the surface is drying quickly. There are some serious ups and downs that alternately test our torque and courage. There are a couple of slow uphill hairpins but a fairly fast last couple of miles.

Back to Adolph Expressway for stage 3 and we improve our time by 22 seconds over the first run and just 11 seconds off Hampton and 10 seconds ahead of Andrew. The Rally Spec Focus cars seems evenly competitive. We have to dodge some very large rocks that have been pushed up by the cars ahead of us on the stage.

Stage 4 is a repeat of Uber Deutschland and we claw another 18 seconds off our first run. But both Hampton and Andrew are improving their times too so we’re not gaining as much as we need.

Adolph Expressway is run again as SS5 and we’re just one second behind Hampton and three seconds ahead of Andrew. Now if only we could get these numbers on all the stages! Kieran later calculated that I’d need to be 2.28 seconds per mile faster in order to catch Hampton. I can do that!

Stage 6 is our third and final pass through Uber Deutschland .  We’ve lost intercom audio on the in-car video again but Kieran and I can hear each other just fine. The tight hairpins are getting softer and a bit more rutted but we still manage to improve our time by another nine seconds.

From Helvetia in a Handbasket is the quirkily named stage 7 (2.38 Miles). A short, fast and fun three minute romp through the woods. Five seconds behind Hampton and five seconds ahead of Andrew. Well, at least we’re consistent.

We then have a service on Turkeybone Road. Here are a few minutes of video from that service - nothing serious with the car and we’re out on time. Service crew are doing an excellent job as usual.

Once more through From Helvetia in a Handbasket  for SS8 and we squeeze three more seconds out of our performance with no drama.

Boney Turk (6.40 Miles) is stage 9. A fast and fairly open road where we’re more comfortable getting a little sideways action on the turns. Wish they were all this much fun. We’re having a blast and turn in a respectable time just six seconds behind Hampton! However we do have a scary, pucker moment just as we cross the finish line. It’s on a downhill, left 4 and the car breaks loose from the gravel. In preventing the car from running off the mountain to the left I over-correct and bounce the front of the car off the bank on the right side of the road. We’ve crunched the front bumper and broken a fog lamp but don’t appear to have done serious damage.

There’s a quick service back at Mill Creek where the crew check over the car and all seems well after digging out some dirt and adding a couple of zip-ties.

Our final stage of the day, is Turkeybone (6.38 Miles) a reverse run of stage 9. Intercom audio is once again going to the camera. The incident at the end of stage 9 hasn’t fazed us and we have a fast and fun run through. There’s a spectator spot about half way through and here is some footage from a spectator - you can hear us coming from a long way away!

So, we’ve successfully completed out twelfth rally in a row! We finish 2nd in Rally Spec Focus, 6th in the 2WD MaxAttack! competition and 10th place overall. Not too shabby!