Welcome to RallyBrat.com!
...because AlexKihurani.com is too hard to spell.
Welcome to the co-driving website for up and coming American co-driver, Alex Kihurani. Here you will find information on Alex as well as co-driving tips, pictures, and videos.
12 December 2007 - Finishing The Year
It’s been a while since I wrote, and a while since my last rally. Life/College get in the way of the real important stuff...like rallying!
In five weeks during my semester I ran three rallies, Rally Colorado, Prescott Forest, and Lake Superior.
Rally Colorado started off well. Testing was productive. We figured out that the ECU was interfering with the speed sensor, causing the diff to run wide open all the time at Ojibwe. This had cost us *a lot* of cornering speed as well as the functionality of my rally computer. We fixed it, and on the first morning we were pumped. We were “best of the rest” on the first stage, just 10 seconds off the big boys at SYMS and Subaru in a Gr. N car, but we were still only a second ahead of Will Correy in his Gr. N Subaru (on his first US event). We decided we needed to take time out of him early since he would only get faster as he acclimated, so we pushed hard on the next stage, cut a ditch, and broke the car. Game Over.
So we set the “best of the rest” stage time on the first stage, push too hard and bust the control arm and the radiator on the next, and work all day out in the wilderness to get the car running and back into town. Then we work all night trying to fix leaks, fix handling issues, and sweet talk organizers into letting us run the following day until a monsoon forces us to pack it in before getting hypothermia...just so that the next morning, a mile into the first stage, we could slide off into a swamp and get time barred.
It’s a cruel sport really...the kind of sport that you’ll continually pour your heart and guts into and still get kicked in the face when you most need redemption, but that’s rally...and if it was pleasant, everyone would be doing it. Instead, you gotta keep your head up, get your feet out of the mud, and push...and when that doesn’t work, you push some more. And when you’re still not out, you push harder until you exhaust all resources. That’s victory in rally...knowing that you gave everything you got, and more...and despite impossible odds, you never backed down. You can’t always win, and you can’t control the millions of unknown variables and risks that litter any rally circuit, but you can always push yourself. When luck is on your side, everyone believes your brilliant. When luck isn’t, everyone thinks you’re foolish and reckless. In the end, it all balances out, and the people that end up successful in everyone else’s eyes kept their head up when it was hard for them to even believe in themselves, let alone anyone else...and eventually, it paid off. That’s my attitude when it comes to rallying. All I need to do is keep my head up and keep racing, and eventually things start to go your way. If they don’t, I still love the sport, and I’m still proud of the effort I’m able to put into the sport and the kind of person it creates...because in the end, it doesn’t really matter if you get what you want, but whether or not you became the man you wanted to be by putting everything on the line and fully accepting your success or failure.
And on to the rest of the season...
Prescott didn’t go too well either. The car basically ready from the start, and the center diff seized after two stages. On the brighter side, it was a nice vacation, and it’s still my favorite scenery in the country.
Lake Superior ended what was a pretty tame Rally America season for Amy and I. No DNF’s, no body damage or accidents, but no top 10 finishes either. Amy had been out of the car since July, so it took some time until we were really on pace. The first two stages went rather well, and then we were way slow through the fast stuff at night until the very last stage where we got the pace up again.
The following morning was slippery beyond belief, and we set a mediocre time...before blasting through Delaware Mine and Burma having a hell of a time and getting right back on point. We even executed a perfect handbrake turn through the delta on Delaware...and when I see we, I mean *we*. Amy is too little to reach the handbrake, so I pull it for her and tell her to get on the power. Teamwork at it’s best :-P
After an unfortunate accident for Pressley that cancelled Brockway, a three hour wait until the next stage somewhat dampened our momentum...but on the last running of Gratiot Lake, we set a blistering time, methodically working our way through the slippery snot/inconsistent surface, water splashes, bumps/holes, hail, snow, and descending darkness to set our best time on the last stage. The whole ordeal made us want to turn around and do it one more time...but the season was already over.
Anyway, so now it’s been nearly 2 months since I’ve been in a rally car; I’m missing the sport badly; and I have yet another month plus some until next season. However, I have some exciting new deals on the horizon as well as the possibility to rally in Britain next fall. I already can’t wait...
Stay tuned!
-Alex