This years season started with building our car. We started with a completely modded 2002 WRX that needed to be returned to stock in order to run Prod AWD and SS classes. The car to be was aquired through one of our customers who owned it. He offered it up to us being it had a blown jdm ej207 motor and had some minor body damage. The car was sitting for nearly 2 years without being driven at all. So needless to say there were some difficulties with removing some of the parts in order to get the build underway.

We had only 2 months to get the car built and the few days before leaving for the rally were extremely hectic. Being the final details were taking some time, we decided to put the car on the trailer and pack the truck at 11pm on Wednesday. After getting it all settled and sitting down to IHOP for some late night food the crew headed for the hotel and Vince and I stayed back to run some errands in the morning. Thrusday at RNY, the crew got working on the car early. They were able to finally fire up the motor for the first time and made sure all was in check. They quickly got started on other things and calling us with requests. With tech inspection closing at 6pm, we rolled in at 5:58 with the car complete! Passed tech and off to the ceremonial start. En route we realised that our speedo wasnt working. Roughly 4 miles later the CEL came on. We found out quickly that we had an issue with our Vehicle Speed Sensor and after working on the car at the ceremonial start, realized the speedo gear inside the trans was not spinning. This gives zero mechanical input to the VSS which in return limits us to only 4500rpm. Proper fix would be to pull the trans and replace the gear.

On our return to Parc Ferme, we stopped to fill up on gas. Once at Parc Ferme, we were ordered to remove our car for a fuel leak. We realised there was a hole in the top of our fuel tank that was leaking outside and inside the car due to remounting the first aid kit. 10pm came the decission by the board to not be penalized for not being in Parc Ferme over night. WE needed to repair the car and have it parked out in front of Parc Ferme by 745am. One of our crew memebers was on his way to the rally and was able to pick up a gas tank on the way. We got to work on pulling out the one with the hole in it and was completely removed by 130am. 230am the new tank arrived and the crew went back to work till 545am.

745am back in front of Parc Ferme for another tech inspection of the car and all was ok! We were finally ready to race!!!

Friday was a big learning curve for both me and Vince. Having never competed before in a rally we ended up with 2min 30sec of penalties for arriving either too early or late to some TC's. We drove the first 6 stages with our VSS problem. During service we reset the ecu and were able to run the rest of the day without many issues. We did need to keep resetting the ecu so we could run full capacity.
We had a few offs and 1 spin during the first 6 stages while i was still learning the car. This was the first time the car was able to drive so there was 0 time for testing. We also didnt have the car tuned for the 32mm restrictor, aligned or corner balanced.

Saturday was a bit better with everything and me and Vince were much more comfortable with the car. First stage we were able to set fastest time in our class and 11th overall on stage. Second stage of the day, a rerun of the first, we were a bit unlucky. With all the cars through the first stage and all the front runners through once more, there was much more dirt and rocks on the road in a particular section and i came in with too much speed and went off the road. We were running much faster that stage and were hoping for a better result overall.
After SS 16 and 17 we headed for Walton for the remainder of the event. These stages were much longer and faster! One was all out and the other was very technical. We had tons of funs on these stages and were happy to be still in the event to run them. 1 stage saw a 70.7 mph average from us over roughly 8 miles of competition!

Despite all the issues with the car at the event we finished our first ever Rally!!!