LSPR 2009

Houghton Michigan was the scene for the Ottawa Forests and Keewenaw Challenge Rallies, the final races for Gravel-spec Motorsports in the Central Regional Championship.

The stage was set for an epic Group 2 battle, the drivers title was up for grabs, navigators were left fighting for the scraps Jay Luikart left for us.

Jim Scray powers through a water crossing on Stage 3

Starting dead freaking last, the party in the back didn't last long. The engine swap turned the Datsun into a rocket propelled lawn dart, catching 2 cars in the opening stages. A reseed at the first service pushed us up to the middle of the field for the rest of the rally. The Kenton stages were good to us, even with 2 offs on Passmore we were still around to take advantage of Matt “Major Tom” Bushore's failed attempt to reach low orbit in his VW Jetta, leaving him twenty feet up a bank, 30 yards deep in the bush.



Leaving Kenton for the final two stages near L'anse we had a hold on 9th place overall, behind the Dodge Neon of Chris Greenhouse and the VW Golf of Paul Koll. In the cruise to the finish the top 3 in G2 held position, new dad Chad Eixenberger would pull ahead of Wiggan, rocketing back through the field after suffering an early tire puncture. Greenhouse captures the G2 championhship with today's beatdown.

G2 Results – Ottawa Forests Rally

1. Chris Greenhouse / Don Derose - 1:36:31.0 - 4th overall
2. Paul Koll / Tim Knorr - 1:37:54.7 - 6th overall
3. Jim Scray / Colin Vickman - 1:39:43.3 - 9th overall
4. Chad Eixenberger / Chris Gordon - 1:42:00.5 - 11th overall
5. Gary Wiggan / Kim Demotte - 1:42:14.8 - 12th overall
6. Bill Caswell / Elliot Sherwood - 1:42:21.6 - 13th overall
7. Matti Himes / Silas Himes - DNF – Stage 5
8. Matt Bushore / Andrew Bushore - DNF – Stage 5, 2nd stage failed to ignite
9. Erik Hill / Mike Yarroch - DNF – Stage 2, Mechanical

Feeling the Mountain Air...

Saturday's Keweenaw Challenge is a completely different animal, the stages are short and extremely rough. Friday is all about choosing your place to push, to win on Saturday you need to drive angry from the start, sacrifice the car, and be crazier than anyone in front of you. Stages today include three runs down Delaware Rd featuring “The Delta”, the most famous spectator point in American Rally, there are hundreds of ways to drive through The Delta, and they are all wrong. Today's stages also feature two runs up Brockway Mountain Drive, the fastest tarmac stage in the championship, with no less than 7 jumps in excess of 90 mph.

The 510 at the bottom of the Delta

Overnight Silas Himes hijacked driving duties in his brother Matti's blacked out Honda Civic, and amazingly Major Tom's Jetta 13 command module was recovered and repaired. Mike Hurst and Rob Bohn dusted off their 75 Ford Capri Cosworth for Saturday, wise to avoid yesterday's carnage.

After the first three stages we were 7th place, ahead of the other rookies but struggling to keep up with the pack led by Silas Himes. After a quick service, we ran Brockway Mountain and didn't die, found a new wrong way to drive around the Delta, and passed up Hurst's Capri in the ditch on Burma Rd.

Three point landing on Brockway

At the last service Curt Scray and Dave Hanna scrambled to replace and axle and carrier bearing and we were on our way to take off another 20 seconds on the second run up Brockway Mountain and a third run through Delaware, where we found the rightest way yet to run the Delta. After a clean drive we finished in 6th place, the Datsun proved it had the strength to tackle everything the Keweenaw can throw at it, and we can be deranged enough to push it.

G2 Results – Keweenaw Challenge

1. Silas Himes / Matti Himes - 32:15.5 - 5th overall
2. Chad Eixenberger / Chris Gordon - 32:37.2 - 6th overall
3. Matt Bushore / Andrew Bushore - 32:48.5 - 8th overall
4. Chris Greenhouse / Don Derose - 32:55.8 - 9th overall
5. Paul Koll / Tim Knorr - 33:19.1 - 11th overall
6. Jim Scray / Colin Vickman - 34:23.5 - 14th overall
7. Bill Caswell / Elliot Sherwood - 35:54.7 - 17th overall
9. Gary Wiggan / Kim Demotte - 36:22.4 - 18th overall
10 . Mike Hurst / Rob Bohn - 1:02:05.5 - 20th overall
11. Erik Hill / Mike Yarroch - DNF – Stage 4, Mechanical

This weekend's podium finish moves Gravel-Spec driver Jim Scray to 6th in the driver's standings, navigator Colin Vickman loses out the battle with Tim Knorr and slips to 3rd place in the standings.

This closes out the 2009 rally season for Gravel-Spec Motorsports, the team would like to thank our fans and families for a great year! Thanks again to this year's sponsors, Source One Security, Authentic Exhaust, and Fastenal.

This year's action isn't done yet!
Nov. 15th Gravity Park Rallycross, Chilton WI - “Rumble in the Park” Gravel-Spec Group A Challenge
Nov. 28th – Rally Paris, Roxton TX – Final event in the regional championship – Colin is jonesing for a seat.
Jan. 2010 – Lake Winnebago Ice Racing, Vinland WI - “War off the Shore” Gravel-Spec Group A Challenge

LSPR 2009 Pre-Rally Report - "Party in the Back" Edition

Houghton Michigan, where men are men...and some of the women are men. The Lake Superior Performance Rally is billed as the oldest toughest and meanest event in the series, the rally hasn't even started and its already the toughest yet. The Gravel-Spec team nearly repeated last year's non-appearance after blowing our third engine in testing two weekends ago due to another machining error. Turns out our engine builder knows as much about his trade as we do. However a quick transplant of a big-bore Nissan 240SX powerplant (meant for off-season activity) kept us in the game.



The team and car will be at Parc Expose by 1:00PM, starting 39th, aka dead freaking last on the road. With a finish today, Gravel-Spec driver Jim Scray will move into 10th place in the Central Region Group 2 championship. Colin Vickman is in the thick of a battle in the Regional Group 2 Co-driver's Championship, with only Tim Knorr present at this rally, solid finishes on Friday and Saturday will clinch 2nd place for Gravel-Spec's navigator.

Ojibwe Forests 2009: The Curse Continues...

The only thing that could possibly entice the Gravel-Spec Rallysport crew to the land of lutefisk, painfully slow internet connections and Brett Favre is a rally, and it figures that they have the best roads in the country, and host several spectacular events every year. Some say The Curse's mysterious origins lies with Gravel-Spec's driving and lifestyle coach, soon to be married, Wisconsin rally icon Dennis “Hollywood” Martin, all we know is theres a boulder off the road known as Dennis' Rock, and anytime we mention it he goes into a trance-like state and begins speaking in tongues with scattered mentions of 34mm restrictors and media vests. This weekend the car I was chasing a ride in managed to roll spectacularly, and while filling Piotr's service rig, the diesel pump hose burst. When the fuel stopped flowing at $66.60, the price of the beast. Our rally ended before we reached Friday's service park with an engine failure on the second stage after a spectacular showing on the Bemidji Speedway super special. Not even a spoonful of bacon bits makes that easy to swallow.

Despite our early exit from the rally good times were had accelerating the depreciation of my car, and new connections within the rally world were made working for the first time with co-driver Greg Dorman and crew chief Gary Grahn, professor of the Pacific Northwest school of mooning rally cars, and Matt Johnson's Subaru specialist Margarite Parker. Special thanks go out to Worldrallysport.com for their thorough coverage of our weekend, 103.7 The Mix FM in Bemidji for their rally coverage and an excellent interview with Piotr, The Super 8 and Hampton Inn of Bemidji and all other local businesses who put up with our attempts to spend the most cash possible.

Congrats to Adam Markut for representing the DSM clan with a 3rd overall finish in his Talon, to Damen Williams for finishing his first rally, and to Travis Pastrana for clinching his fourth consecutive Rally America national championship.

Check out worldrallysport.com's coverage here:

[url]http://www.worldrallysport.com/news_centre_all[/url]

Ojibwe Forests - Pre-Rally Report

We've got 500 miles to go. No hotel reservations. The Jetta is jammed with tools. Its 11:46 PM and I haven't even started packing.

Hit it.

The Rally America national championship series makes its return to the midwest this weekend, as crews roll into Bemidji Minnesota for the Ojibwe Forests Rally. As is typical for us this time of year, we're out of cash, so the Datsun will not be making an appearance. However the Gravel-Spec crew will be lending their service expertise to PPD Motorsports for the weekend, to crew for Piotr Wiktorczyk and Greg Dorman, fresh from their appearance at X Games.

Winner of the 2004 Headwaters Rally, Piotr Wiktorczyk is a dark horse at Ojibwe, finishing a strong 4th overall at last year's event and had a podium finish the previous year stripped away by the stewards.

As your Co-Driver in Exile, I'll provide daily updates assuming I have access to the sweet, sweet nectar of the interweb, and that a certain un-named Japanese manufacturers glass transmissions don't go Carl Lewis on us.

Oh no, you won't make up for it now.

Podium Finish for Gravelspec Rallysport @ Nemadji 2!

On June 13th the Central Region Championship again wound its way to Duquette Minnesota for the second running of the Nemadji Trail rally. With 50% of the field made up of G2 machinery the stage was set for a two wheel drive battle royale, over two three stage rallies. With a new 1.7 liter powerplant in place and a tune the previous night Jim Scray's Datsun was ready to rock. Dave Cizmas was determined to continue dishing out the beat down he laid out last month at Nemadji 1, he led the rally overall after stage 1. 21 seconds back was the GTI of Paul Koll and Tim Knorr, another 2o seconds back sat the Scray/Vickman 510, less than two seconds behind Mason Moyle's WRX. In the following break the clouds opened up, hail was reported in service, and game on the stages changed drastically. With a little rain the clay base of the road gets slick, with alot of rain it turns into something resembling teflon soup. In the wet conditions Cizmas was able to open up his overall lead by a whopping 1.2 seconds over the Mustang of Mark Utecht. Koll and Knorr lost time on stage 2 and slipped to 45 seconds back. Despite a 70's era wiper motor, and a brief tour of a forest ditch, Scray pulled 10 seconds ahead of Moyle's Subaru, but still lost 58 seconds to Cizmas. Turns out the car wasnt as waterproof as we thought it was, by the finish I had an inch of water sloshing around my feet! By stage 3 the rain had stopped, but even with drying conditions giving the advantage to the Mustang, it wasn't meant to be as Cizmas surrendered the lead to Utecht on the final stage to lose out on the overall win by 6.6 seconds. It wasn't meant to be for us either, engine trouble cropped up shortly after we were underway on the final stage, forcing us to limp along to conservative third place, losing out on 7th overall to Moyle by 3.6 seconds.

G2 Standings - Nemadji 2A

1 Cizmas/Himes -- 23:49.2
2 Koll/Knorr -- 25:26.4
3 Scray/Vickman -- 26:38.4
4 Huebbe/Huebbe -- 27:34.8
5 Kimmes/Smith -- 28:43.8
6 Stoehr/Weber -- 32:53.4

Engine trouble kept us from starting the second rally. In dry conditions Nemadji 2B was a race of attrition in the G2 field. Paul Koll didn't make it through SS4, succumbing to a transmission failure. Dave Cizmas and Matti Himes jumped out into a 40 second lead over the Huebbe's VW, only to drop out on Stage 5. Mark and John Huebbe held on to take the win in their 1970 Beetle.

G2 Standing - Nemadji 2B

1 Huebbe/Huebbe -- 26:58.2
2 Kimmes/Smith -- 28:43.8
3 Stoehr/Weber -- 29:12.6
4 Cizmas/Himes -- DNF
5 Koll/Knorr -- DNF

6 Scray/Vickman -- DNS

The 3rd place finish moved Jim Scray into the top ten in drivers G2 points, Colin Vickman continues to cling to third place in the navigator's standings with a four point margin over Tim Knorr.

Double Podium at Nemadji Trail

Gravel-Spec co-driver Colin Vickman scored a double podium finish at the Nemadji Trail Rally last weekend. Colin again teamed with Chad Eixenberger to defend last year's Group 2 victory at this event. Chad and Colin drove to a third place finish in the first rally, behind Dave Cizmas and Brian Naughton in their E85 powered GTI, and Mike Hurst and Al Kintigh's immaculately prepared Ford Capri, despite an oil system problem. Despite a brief rain, dust became a major factor in the second run through the stages. Chad and Colin set faster times than last year, but still ended up on the recieving end of a 1 minute beatdown by Cizmas and Naughton. The third and second place finishes were enough to push Chad into the lead of the Central Region G2 Championship. Colin moves up to third in the Central Region G2 Co-Drivers championship Congrats goes out to Brian Naughton, a long time TSD'er, for showing up in a big way in his first stage rally.

Next weekend the Central Region Championship makes its only stop in Wisconsin at Gravity Park in Chilton. This is your chance to see top flight rally cars in action! Being our home event, the Gravel-Spec crew will be working stages, helping to keep this rally running.

Busy in May!

Sunday May 3rd, we'll be at the NWTC auto show with a few other rally cars, the next weekend if our motor is done we'll be in Minnesota for the Nemadji Trail Rally, and just closed a deal for Jim an Colin to service for Dmitri Kishkarev the next weekend at Oregon Trail. Basically if you're at a rally in May we'll be around!

Of course to do most of this we need to repair the damage from 100 Acre Wood. Not a whole lot we can do until parts show up. New rear subframe bushings are on back order.


The days of the "diesel" Datsun are numbered, the motor is being rebuilt by Bay Speed of De Pere WI.



Most important are the new additions to the service van including, 8" monitor, with dvd player an backup camera, an the addition of more outside lights then necessary! There's something very weird about walking up next to a cargo van and hearing the Top Gear theme song.

more datsun photos here..
http://s217.photobucket.com/albums/cc223/Cscray94/

Introduction

There are no pace cars, no yellow flags or rain delays and no practice sessions. There's no track, there are no laps, and sometimes there are no roads at all.
There are Four wheels. One Driver. And hundreds of miles of the most unforgiving terrain imaginable.
Remember when you and a few buddies bet who could go fastest around Deadman's Curve? Now imagine you have sixty buddies, and three hundred corners to tackle. Good, now find another road. Lather, Rinse and Repeat. For two days. And two nights.
Rallying is racing at its lowest common denominator, the oldest, purest form of motorsports legally available for human consumption. Rally features real cars racing against the clock on closed sections of public roads. Events last several days and cover hundreds of miles through all conditions, rain or snow, day or night. This extreme test of skill, speed and endurance is what makes rally racing North Americas fastest growing and most exciting motorsport.

Based in Green Bay Wisconsin, Gravel-Spec Motorsports was formed in 2008 as an A-Team style service crew for hire. Our first season of operation saw us bounce around between several different drivers, expanding our experience with varied machinery and sucessfully managing multi-car teams to consistently produce top 10 finishes. Our success motivated us to campaign our own 1972 Datsun 510 in the Rally America Regional Group 2 Championship.
Team driver Jim Scray has been involved in nearly every aspect of the US Rally scene from simply being a fan, to volunteering at events and working on service crews. With the purchase of an $800 Galant VR4 he took his involvement to the next level. After 2 seasons of success in local ice racing and rallycross within the WAG driver development program, he stepped up to Stage Rally in 2009. Jim is a certified auto mechanic and currently works developing security systems.
By day Colin Vickman is a mildly disgruntled engineer, but on any given weekend he's at the top of his game in the right seat. From his humble beginnings trashing cars at rallycrosses, Colin has emerged as one of the Central Region's top navigators. A breakout debut performance at the 2007 saw he and driver Ivan Milanovic snatch a narrow victory in the Auto Value Keewenaw Challenge Rally. Colin followed up with another Group 2 class win at the Nemadji Trail rally. As a seasoned navigator his driver management and strategy skills give us an edge over our competition.

Some say that he finds it perfectly normal straighten a frame with a lawn tractor. and that he once counted to infinity … twice. We simply know him as The Curt. Curt Scray is GravelSpec's Crew Chief, Machinist and Technical Director rolled into one. His vast motorsports is rooted in off-road trucks, mud drags, and circle track racing. For the last 5 years he's been the key to coordinating service work for top 10 teams. His ability to solve problems quickly with the limited materials and tools available put him second to none in our field.
Wisconsin rally legend Dennis Martin serves as Gravel Spec’s mentor, advisor, life coach, and all around rally resource. Dennis started his rally career as a mechanical engineering student at Michigan Tech University, where he volunteered for the popular Lake Superior Pro Rally and for the Honda Factory racing teams. In 2000 he built his first car, an open class Eclipse, which he promptly rolled into a lake. Undeterred he rebuilt the car and soon became a force in the Midwest regional scene. In 2002 Dennis went Pro and built an open class Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 4. By 2004 Dennis was rallying all over the country, winning stages and rallies, and was one of the top drivers in America. He continues to drive periodically today, always turning in top results.
When he’s not abusing rally cars Dennis works as an International Man of Mystery for Enstrom Helicopter Corp.’s sales and marketing department. He spends what little free time he has playing with antique airplanes and mentoring up and coming rally teams in Wisconsin.

Our first rallies of the year saw us put up two top 10 in class finishes at the 100 Acre Wood Rally despite typical new car issues. Current plans for the rest of the season include running the Nemadji Trail, and Lake Superior Regional rallies, various track days, and local car shows. Our website www.gravel-spec.com is currently under construction.