Here is what my PFR pretty much was. This was my first time competing at this event. I have worked the event, Serviced for teams and photographed it.

So PFR had it's ups and downs.. Friday Night on SS1 we hit a big rock crushed the exhaust, but more damaging was i bent the drive shaft. there was a wicked shake to it right after. but stupid me, i didn't bring the spare. 3 more stages and then service. A friend of mine who lives in Vancouver who is slowly building a corolla just showed up in Merritt at the service hault and asked how things were going. Heard the story about the drive shaft, then turned around back to Van and picked his up. I had it installed by 1:15am at the overnight stop. At this point we had a close to one minute lead over our closest competitor for the national portion of the rally.

Day 2 started with stages we have never competed on before. 2 stages run twice in a loop. After the first loop about 22kms in total for the 2 we pulled a futher 3 seconds ahead. and one of the stages we were 9th over all only 1 sec behind an open class evo 8. The 2nd time through the stages weren't so good. My co driver got behind by one corner at the wrong time. 7 kms into SS11 was call a 6R.. (my notes are 1 the tightest and 6 is flat out) What was the next corner in the notes but being one corner behind just at that spot was a 2R !! slippy mud. We ended up being 15 feet off the road in what lucky was a clearcut. But the mud was too deep and while trying driving out we we hit a berm and high centred the car. So we had to wait until sweep showed up and a quick pull we were back on the road but had lost about 16 minutes. the lead and the chance to secure the Western Canadian Championship for our class. After that the next stage, service and the next 3 stages went well. we clawed back some time.

On SS16 we set a personal best and the 6th fastest time. but we hit a rock and broke the right rear wheel, surprisingly the tire didn't go flat. On the road section we had to pull over and change it since it was hitting the suspension. The car was up on the jack and the tire was off just about to put the new one on and the jack started to fall. So i started to brace, push the car to keep it from falling. I felt i pop/ snap in my foot. Then it felt like jello. then the obscenities that described the pain started to come out of my mouth. Continuing to push the car up we finally got the wheel on and drove back to service. on the way to service i discovered i could not press the brake pedal with my right foot. and the gas was a little sketchy. I grabbed a new spare at service and put on the lights for the last 2 stages (almost 50kms of stages) of the rally.

Unsure how my foot will be i gave it the best i could. Half way through the stage i got sight of the car that started a minute in front of us. by the end of the stage we had made up 40 some seconds on him but could hardly see due to the hanging dust. It was like driving with a pillow case over your face. 3 times we almost went off the road. The next stage was a repeat of that one. but this time is was dark. we swapped places with the car in front of us and the one infront of them to see if we could avoid the dust. With no wind in the air the dust was hanging around. And with the lights on visibility was almost zero. about 500m from the ens of the stage we hit a rock with the right front and got a slow leak. it lasted to the end of the stage. We drove it down to the end of the gravel and changed it on the pavement. and then drove to the end of the rally, declared our time in and the rally was finally over.

The Awards banquet We got a surprise. We had forgotten with all our drama we had won regional 1 (friday night stages) in our class, so we got the trophy for that. The next morning my foot was big. I got a ride over to the hospital where I got it x-rayed andand it turns out i had broken the 2nd metatarsal in my right foot. Not too nice when i had a 700km tow back to Calgary. I will do my best to be back next year. It was a great event. Brooke and Helmer are some of my favorote roads i have ever been on.

Next Event is the Kananaskis Rally Nov 8-9. http://www.kananaskisrally.com I am hoping my foot will fit into my shoe by then and i will have some money from being off work with no pay since i can barely walk to the washroom right now.

Thaks for reading

Kris Schofield
Ista Rally Sport
Gr2 AE86