August Madness

Rally Review posted to Rally-L

Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1999 15:08:33 -0400

From: Mark Kleckner

Thanks to everyone who showed up for August Madness '99. This was the 17th running of the August Madness Rally. Rain the day before the rally smoothed the dirt roads nicely, kept the dust down, and left a few big water puddles to play in. Fifteen cars were entered. We scored 10 out of 10 controls (totals are posted below). Quite a few hardcore "E" and "S" class vehicles made for an intense battle. E class has always been strong in the Detroit Region, but this year, Stock has had a great showing at each event as well.

This year, we changed to a nighttime format to avoid some of the local traffic that we encountered last yearWe had a few time allowances for local traffic, but not as many as last year. The Limited class team of Shaffer/Fekete (the "Jims"), got to talk to the County Sherriff's Deputy (I believe his name was Roscoe). All he wanted to know was "What is *that* on your dash?"

The Stock class Bill Braund and Brad Lightfoot withdrew at the break due to navigator illness. One other casualty of motion sickness was the navigator for the Sweep crew. He shall remain nameless here, but shall suffer endless ridicule from those who know who it was. One account has a score of 1 good "ralph" per checkpoint. It was also reported that the E-class Subaru of Cramer/Gowdy was having equipment troubles and withdrew.

Taking the overall win, and first in E class was the duo of Shue and Townsend in the SHO with 10 points over 10 controls. This was the same winning score from last year. They barely edged out Harkcom/Lester, who were gearing up for the Finger Lakes 1000/Historic NY. Harvey/Mickle missed two pauses to come in third. If not for those missed pauses, they would have won with a score of 5 points!

Limited class had only one entry. The "Jims" had a SNAFU in the first half that gave them 74 points on Leg 2.They redeemed themselves by winning the second half of the rally overall with four points over five controls.

Stock was closely contested with Worden/Robinette edging out the usual crowd by Kay/Bennett by only 13 points, and Ramsay/Sytniak by only 21 points. The newlywed Essenburgs had a respectable score of 249 running pure seat-of-pants! These stock competitors are getting serious; Worden's SAAB was sporting brand new Hakkas, and Kay's Contour had some chunky RE43's that could have belonged to a tractor.

Top honors in Novice went to Steve Lovett and Nathan Gerber in a brand new 1999 Caddillac Deville (an absolutely huge car!) with 641 points. This was their first rally ever. After the break, they figured it out and only took 77 points on the second half of the rally.

Thanks to all the workers: Mark Henderson and Rob Moran in car "0", The Big Man (Paul Noble) and the Bald Guy (now known as Ralph) in the Sweep truck, Control workers Scott Radabaugh, Terry Palmer (also did the pre-check), Erik Olson, "Freaky" Steve Baumbach, Sir Drinks-A-Lot, and Jim Gentz who also helped with scoring.

Thanks to everyone for a great rally!

Mark Kleckner
Rallymaster - August Madness

CAR TEAM                    CLS LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG LEG TOTAL  CAR CLS
 #  DRIVER/NAVIGATOR              1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33 SCORE   #
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