High Desert Trails

The High Desert Trails Rally marked the second event of the California Rally Series (CRS) Championship calendar took place this past Saturday April 9th. The rally moved to new roads outside of Ridgecrest, CA which were hard packed dirt with short sections of tarmac.
The fast desert roads seemed to be custom made for Bill Holmes and Sean Gallagher in their Ford F-150. The team won every stage of the event on their way to the overall and CRS-5 class win. Runners up in CRS-5 were Jack Szanto and Jack Penley in their Dodge Neon SRT-4, who traded stage times with Brian Hamblin and Ray Hocker in their turbocharged Volvo 240. However, a high speed spin and stall late in the rally caused the Volvo team to fall down the leader board.

The competition amongst the top teams in the CRS-2 class can only be described as epic. Three extremely talented drivers were within seconds of each other throughout the event, and the leader board seemed to change with every stage. At the end of the day, Michel Hoche-Mong and Marie Boyd secured the top spot in their VW Golf (and second place overall), ahead of George Doganis and Tom Smith in a Honda Civic (who finished third overall). 2010 rookies of the year Gaylord Van Brocklin and Steve Secviar were on maximum attack from start to finish (and then some). They crossed the flying finish of the last stage fast enough to take first place, but perhaps too fast to negotiate the next corner. Immediately after the finish they lost control of their VW Golf going over a crest and went off in spectacular fashion, cartwheeling down the hill in full view of the finish control workers. The team emerged unscathed, but would end up officially scored as a “Did Not Finish” as they were unable to complete the final transit. Inheriting third place in CRS-2 were Eddie Fiorelli and Brent Ellzey in the rally debut of their VW Golf.

Hakan Okcuoglu took first place in Open 4WD (and fourth place overall) in his Mitsubishi Eclipse. Mitsubishi seemed to be the manufacturer of choice in this class, with Vartan Samuelian and Lawrence Babahekian scoring second place points in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.

CRS-GT, the production-based four wheel drive class, was won by Paul Willemsen and Travis Bos in their Subaru Impreza WRX. The event marked Paul’s return to rally after a several year hiatus. He proved he did not lose much speed during the break as he finished over two minutes ahead of 2010 CRS-GT champions Kevin Welker and Nolan Sambrano in their Subaru Impreza.

Performance-Stock was also won by a driver coming off a multi-year hiatus. Tony Chavez and Raquel Salas drove their VW Golf to a P-Stock victory in a close battle with John Black and Lori Stone in their Ford Ranger. The second place finish is enough for Black/Stone to maintain their lead in the championship thanks to a strong finish.

The High Desert Trails Rally was first run in 1973 on roads to the southeast and west of Ridgecrest, CA. After running for the past two years at a motorsports facility on the edge of town, the rally moved to some never before run roads for 2011.

The California Rally Series is the premier performance rally championship in the southwestern United States. The Series incorporates events from various sanctioning bodies in order to create a meaningful regional championship for its members. The Series celebrates more than 35 continuous years of performance rally, making it the longest running rally series in the United States. To learn more about the California Rally Series visit www.californiarallyseries.com and follow @crspress on twitter.

Keep track of the teams and their progress here:

We are! With an outstanding response from volunteers over the last 2 weeks, we filled all our worker positions. That’s everyone from the communicator blocking a side road, to the people handling the last time card. We want to again Thank You for signing up and making HDT happen! With 28 cars on the start list we are going to have a blast this weekend! It looks like there will be some weather blowing through on Friday, but I know you’re all prepared with extra layers if it gets cold, sunscreen, bug-spray, camp chairs, and all the things you need for a great rally.

Travel safe everyone – we’ll see you in Ridgecrest.
- Kris & Christine

Final preparations are in the works for the High Desert Trails Rally 2011! The Rally-Tire.com lanyards are ready to go. Streetwise Motorsports will be delivering some awesome vinyl headers to us on Monday and we’ll be picking up more then twice the number of T-shirts we had last year. By now captains have been in contact with their teams, and documents and copies continue to flow off our printers. If for some reason, you have not been contacted – let us know!

With 28 cars on the start list we appreciate the help of all our volunteers! Our competitors have made appointments for Friday tech, and this should make the process go smoothly. We filled the SpringHill Suites this year, and we’ll have the main conference room for registration on Friday and Saturday morning. Directions to the stages have been printed out and will be available to you in registration on Friday night in Ridgecrest.

We are really excited and can’t wait to see all of you this coming weekend!
- Kris & Christine

Unfortunately we didn’t get any RallyMoto interest before early entry had closed (March 8th) and we already had 32 cars on the sign-up list. We opened all the spots up for cars as detailed in our supplemental regulations. We will not be running RallyMoto bikes this year and here’s why: When we run bikes, we run a separate sweep just for them. This ensures your safety, but adds about 20 minutes to the running of each stage (regardless of the number of bikes – even for just 1 bike) so adding a single bike to an event with 20 cars makes it like running 25 cars. Our 30 car limit has to do with the time it will take to run the stages. Originally we had it open for 20 cars and 10 bikes. We were expecting about 16-18 cars and 4-5 bikes – that would have brought us to about 6:30PM. With 29 cars and 1 bike we’d be out there way past sundown.

What does this mean for RallyMoto? Sign up as soon as you can for the next RallyMoto event, and let the organizers know early that you plan to run it!

We appreciate your understanding.
- Kris

The High Desert Trails Rally will be in less then two weeks on Saturday, April 9th, 2011 based in Ridgecrest, California. California Rally Series competitors asked what they wanted and HDT answered this year with great new roads, a single day event, and organizer supplied stage notes. The big twist this year is there will be no familiarization lap or reconnaissance, so every driver will be seeing these roads at speed for the first time. A blind rally is a true test of team ability.

Teams immediately stepped up to that challenge by taking the twenty reserved car spots, and when RallyMoto entries failed to appear, the organizers moved swiftly to reallocate those spots, maxing the event at thirty cars. Notable entries for this years rally include: Top drivers, Doug Chernis and George Plsek, who will each be piloting AWD turbo monsters, but Bill Holmes will also be pushing for the overall win in his powerful RWD Ford F-150 – having won this event in the past. In CRS-2, last years winner, Gaylord Van Brocklin, (pictured) will be defending against the very consistent George Doganis. Don’t be surprised to see any of these drivers on the podium.

The route will take competitors up twisty switchbacks and over ridgelines of hard-packed, wide, dirt roads. This is followed by a fast flowing route that rises up out of a valley and descends sharply onto a short section of tarmac. Over sixty miles of stages with a one hour service stop should make a great day of rallying!