Posted on

Colorado Rally Cross: Season Opener

I was just minding my own business at work on Friday when I get a text message. “Find a truck and Trailer and the BMW is yours to race on Saturday.” I consider myself a fairly honest person, but I’ll steal a truck and trailer for that opportunity! After some quick searches I got another message “truck and trailer are taken care of.” Holy crap, that is even better.

So off we went, we headed out to CORE unloaded and signed up. I realized I hadn’t driven the BMW in about 7 months so I figured it should be quite entertaining to see my tentative first runs.

Once on track we had a pile of fun, it was a very windy day and I was driving with Grant Hughes as a second driver in the car. Dave brought out the EVO aka the Evil (according to voice-to-text) and though we didn’t win any awards (though Grant nearly clinched the Cone Killer award) we had a blast.

The photo in this thread is pulled from this PhotoBucket stream. Once I figure out how to contact the guy I may just have to get this thing printed!

http://s621.photobucket.com/albums/tt291/mrk9182/Colorado%20RX/

Posted on

Testing and tuning with the EVO

What do you get when you take a high powered EVO made to run the toughest hillclimb in the nation and put its rally shoes back on? Well, you basically get a low level aircraft!

IMG_7408

After a bit of a rough ride at Pikes peak this year the car is back in action and ready for another local hill climb. Monarch is part of the CHCA series, in fact it is the last race of the series. The Kerns currently hold the record on the hill when they ran previously in the EVO with almost 200 less horsepower than it has currently. After fixing damage, replacing parts and basically converting it back to a rally car we took the car out to CORE to test it out.

IMG_7425

The EVO has so much power that all four wheels spin in nearly every gear on the dirt. It is a bit of an incredible thing. In addition it goes so much faster than the BMW that when you are going along the same course you spend close to double the time simply off the ground. There were several times when I thought: “Hmm, I sure hope we can land, regain traction and make that corner right there.” The funny thing is that the Ohlin suspension is so smooth compared to the BMW that even though you can tell you are going faster, the visual inputs are coming at you quicker, but it feels so smooth that you feel as though you are either going the same speed or going slower than the BMW.

IMG_7436

After a solid run at CORE we packed it up and headed home. No need to run it all day but we had a good solid test and it was a bit humbling to see Dave say with what appeared to be genuine surprise. “Wow, after testing with the BMW all summer, the EVO is FAST!”

IMG_7409

Posted on

RaceKern: PPIHC Full Run

If you looked up the word ‘determined’ in the dictionary, it says “see racekern.com.” The Kerns have had some of the toughest years at Pikes Peak and each year they come out of it wit a smile on their face and a lesson learned. Some of those lessons I don’t think they could have ever avoided so it is amazing how positive and driven they can remain!

This year’s lesson? Dirt may be scary at times, but asphalt has many faces to. The thing about dirt is that you are relying on a surface that has minimal grip, so you are driving in such a way that you are constantly compensating for that lack of grip. On asphalt you are using all the grip that you can get out of the road. So if that grip goes away, you have a much tougher time. This year the Kerns found a part of the course that dust, gravel, something was blown onto the road and braking grip was eliminated! Stephan Verdier found the same place, but his experience was even more catastrophic! So ride along with the Kerns as they take you up the mountain. Keep your eyes peeled for their incidents and for the pieces that decide not to make it all the way to the summit with them!

Take a moment and read the Kern’s recap on the week at Pikes Peak on RaceKern.com