09/21/2018
On Sunday September 16th, we took part in the New England Region SCCA Goodbye Summer Rallysprint at Team O'Neil Rally School and we had a blast!
Saturday was a travel day for the team. At 8 am, driver Dan Petrillo and crew members Greg Williams and Nick Nuzzo started the trip to Littleton, New Hampshire with a quick stop in Massachusetts to pick up co-driver Chris Strew. We made it to the Littleton Walmart just in time for tech inspection. With tech inspection complete, we switched gears and started messing with the RallyCore computer. After some back and forth with Randall Walker of RallyCore, we had the rally computer setup to output communication to the GoPro. We were ready to race and it was time for bed.
Sunday was race day. We arrived at Team O'Neil nice and early to get our pit area setup and do our final checks. Dan and Chris jumped in the car to check comms and we discovered a problem. Chris could hear Dan but nothing was coming through Dan's headset. At this point the crew got to work and discovered a soldered connection at the end of the wire had cracked. They pulled apart the connection, taped the wires together, and swapped the driver and co-driver wires. Buy swapping the wires, Dan would still be able to hear Chris if the electric tape failed. Fortunately, this fixed lasted all day and we never had an issue.
It was time to race. We started out easy to get a feel for things again. The first stage was run 4 times and we were dropping 10 seconds each run. The car was feeling great and we knocked the rust off. We went into the first service with no issues. The crew checked tire pressure and we were ready for stage 2.
Stage 2 went through the gravel pit which is a bit rougher compared to the first stage. On the second running of stage 2, we came around a left turn to see a baby sized rock sticking straight up on stage. Dan thought he was able to move over enough to miss it but that wasn't the case and it hit the passenger side making quite the racket. With everything still feeling normal, we pushed on. On the transit back down, we noticed it was slightly pulling to the right. We finish the last 2 runs of stage 2 and head into service. The guys got it up in the air to make sure everything was ok from the rock hit. The crew gave us a clean bill of health and we were ready for stage 3.
Stage 3 had some variation at the beginning making for 2 different starting section utilizing the different options at Team O'Neil. Dan and Chris were in sync and trying to push it especially coming into the chicane. The car was running great and we made it through the final stages with no issues and finished the race!
Having not raced in over a year, we came into the race with a goal of finishing and not breaking anything. We completed our goals and then some. We ended the day 3rd in class(out of 3 and 5th overall. We were surprised and very happy with the results!
Thank you to all workers and volunteers for running such a smooth event!
Photos: Greg Williams
Sponsors: Big Shed Racing / Turbotektuning LLC / RallyCore
