Record Setting Subaru

As I mentioned earlier, the arrival of my brother's Subaru 2.5 RS marked our involvement in getting out and participating in the local autocross scene. We did the majority of our racing with the Connecticut Autocross & Rally Team,  a local club that held autocrosses every other week.  CART events were a great deal of fun.  The variety of cars that showed up on any given Sunday was fantastic.  You had everything from new C5 Corvettes to vintage Mini's. 

The events were also frequented by interesting people. One such person was Jeff Denmeade.  Jeff used to show up to the events in a full blown Rallyart prepped Mitsubishi Evo5!  This was way before Evo's were available in the States. It was the same car he drove in the Mount Washington Hill Climb:

Denmead on Mt. Washington

I just did a quick web search and Jeff is still at it. He has recently tackled Pike's Peak in a Australian built Skelta!

Another guy that was always at the events was Bill Rutan. William "Bill" Rutan holds the record for the quickest gravel road time to the top of Mount Washington in a car that came to be called the Bathtub--a home-built hillclimber powered by a quad-cam Porsche 356 Carrera engine mounted amidships in what was at one point long ago a stock VW Sedan.

In 1961, Bill drove his lightweight car 17.4 miles to the 6,288-foot peak in a stunning 9 minutes and 13 seconds. There were Porsches and even Jaguars there at the bottom of the mountain, but none of ultimate consequence. Bill trounced the standing record by a full minute and eight seconds. The previous mark set by Carroll Shelby behind the wheel of a Formula 1 Ferrari was permanently broken. The road to the summit was paved the following year, cementing Bill's run into the books as the record time up the gravel course.



Rutan's 1961 record breaking run

My brother and I always had a great time at the CART events. And while we never recorded the FTD (fastest time of day) among such experienced drivers my brother did set a record of his own.

He recorded what may have been the fastest off course in CART autocross history!  The way the club set up the starting line was interesting.  There was the starting line itself which was flanked by cones and the starting light. When it changed from red to green you were good to go.  However, the actually timing trigger was set up at the first set of cones usually a few feet away from the starting line. Once you got the green light and took off your official time didn't start till you went though the very first gate and tripped the optical trigger.  Apparently my brother got the green and launched hard and fast as he would always do in his all wheel drive Subaru. He made his entire run and when he finished to get his time he was told he went off course.  Under further analysis it turns out he somehow managed to not trip the timing equipment, meaning he missed the very first gate.  So he not only was off-course, but never really managed to be on-course!

 To this day we still aren't sure how this was even possible.

Some pics of the Subrau in action at a Renselaer Sports Car Association event:

 

I wanted to be a rally car driver

I like rally cars. If you read my very first post you'll see that the first toy I fell in love with was a little Fiat Abarth 131 rally car.  Follow that with my post about a ridiculous fictitious spending spree and you would have learned that I hold the Lancia Stratos in high esteem. Add to this pair the Lancia 037 and you have my Italian trifecta of rally awesomeness.

 

Nearly fifteen years ago the rally car bug hit my brother and I pretty hard. That specific holiday season was spent like most, home celebrating as a family.  As an Italian family the term "celebrating" actually means "eating."  While sitting at the dining room table (I think on New Year's Eve)  we had the TV tuned to Speedvision (now just called Speed).  As was (and still is) common during the holidays, many networks aired marathons and Speedvision's interpretation of this holiday tradition was to air a marathon recapping the entire 1997 World Rally Championship season.

We watched in awe as Tommi Mäkinen, Carlos Sainz and Colin McRae battled it out around the world. My impression was that the whole thing was just crazy. Crazy conditions, crazy speeds, and even crazier spectators.  How else can you describe a motorsport in which hitting a sheep at 100 mph is a real possibility?

The manufacturers' race was a battle between Mitsubishi, Toyota and Subaru.  For some reason, my brother and I were automatically drawn to the rally blue Subaru Impreza of Colin McRae.  We watched race after race.

Eventually at some point (not sure if it was prompted by commercials) the conversation shifted towards our jealously of the fact that the European market had street versions of the rally cars.  We then discussed the one variant we did have available to us.  The Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS.   It was nothing compared to turbo charged version overseas but was all we had. It had the right boy-racer look as it was available in the iconic rally blue with gold-colored 16-inch five-spoke alloy wheels and featured several external cues from its overseas brethren such as hood vents, a hood scoop, and a rally-inspired rear spoiler. 

At some point later in 1998 my brother traded in his pickup and bought a 1999 model. The naturally aspirated 2.5-liter wasn't anything to write home about (especially by today's standards), but the car was still a blast.  Most importantly, it was the launching pad for us becoming active in organized motorsport. We started autocrossing and rallying with local clubs. I even eventually started running the racing club sponsored by my university and my brother would bring the Subaru to our events.

It was also a very cool way to navigate the Honda-ladden sport compact car scene that was erupting at that time.  My brother spent a great deal of time modding that car (details to come). 

As the holidays approach I'll tell you more about our little wannabe rally car. I'll even detail our exploits in a Time-Speed-Distance (TSD) Road Rally and my brother's record setting autocross accomplishment.

But for now just remember this: I always wanted to be a rally car driver...and still do.

The College Years

After high school I headed off to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York.  RPI is made for people like me.  No fluff courses like literature or gym, but a state of the art education based on science and technology coupled with access to things like machine shops and wind tunnels to put your classroom studies to the test.

I quickly made friends with a kid who had a lifted GMC Jimmy in the parking lot.  This friendship yielded a slew of stories about getting stuck in mud and ultimately rolling the truck over on one of our many an off-road excursions. I'm sure I'll give a detailed account at a later date but here is just a taste of what we used to be up to:

While at RPI I became involved with the Formula SAE race car team. I even became involved with the Formula Electric race car team which was a full sized open wheel race car with an electric power plant.
I also ended up running the Rensselaer Student Auto Shop and the Rensselaer Sports Car Association while at school.  The Auto Shop was a student run organization that operated a shop facility for RPI students.  The idea was there was a fully equipped four bay garage on campus that any student could come to and use to perform their own work.  This was a tremendous asset to have on campus and was ultimately where all us like-minded car guys found each other.   At its peak, we had some serious iron (for a bunch of kids) being worked on in that shop.

The Sports Car Association was basically the same group of guys but we organized and held autocross races on campus and road rallies in the area.  We would get some cool hardware showing up for our races. Plus we'd get some of our recently graduated friends showing up with company rental cars!

 

I still can't believe the school supported both of these organizations.