The 100 Acre Wood Rally in Salem Missouri is known for its wide, fast, gravel roads and its big crashes. Its usually the second round of the Rally America series and the first for new cars to flex their muscles–Sno*Drift is all about finesse between the snow banks. On the Rockstar Energy Rally team we were debuting an all new Mitsubishi Evo X Rally Car; the first Rally America Open Class prepared version of the car on the planet. We tested the car Wednesday, previewed the race stages on Thursday and raced Friday and Saturday. I have to admit, for its first time on gravel the Libra Racing prepared Evo was extremely reliable and showed great potential. While the conservative engine set-up is still very much in development the car showed great potential by taking a podium in the most horsepower hungry event of the calendar.

We made it through the rally virtually problem free. John Buffum’s Libra Racing crew took care of any issues quickly but their diligent preparation before the event is what made the good result a possibility. My co-driver, Chrissie, was on every note perfectly the whole weekend so my job was fairly straight forward… find a comfortable set up, build speed and don’t crash! We didn’t put a tire off during the two day event except for one cattle crossing jump. The car felt good over the two previous jumps so I hit the third fairly fast. The photographers said we flew 3 car lengths further than anyone and we came down pretty hard on the nose. With only cosmetic damage the hard landing didn’t cost any time.

The last two stages were the only tighter, more technical stages of the rally and suited the Evo X very well. We had a tight battle going with ACP for second, who was clearly faster on the high speed stages, so we were exited to attack on those last few stages; and with the addition of 7 inches of snow at the end of the race our power disadvantage was no longer an issue. On stage 14 of 15 we made great time in the snow, passing Dave Mira on the very narrow stage (which was exiting) and still beating ACP and Ken Block. The last stage was surely our chance to chase down ACP but it wasn’t meant to be, the stage was canceled! Chrissie and I are incredibly competitive so we were bummed at the decision but we can’t complain about our third place podium finish on this difficult rally.

I had a blast in the new Rockstar EVO and stoked about it’s potential in the tighter, more technical rallies to come!