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.