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.
29 May 2008 - Craziness in '08 Part 2
It’s a month before Olympus, and I decide I need to order my ticket from State College, PA to Spokane, WA before it gets too expensive. I order my ticket based on the preliminary schedule and forward it to the team, just to get the phone call that Will would not be running due to financial concerns. I’m now extremely concerned, not only that I lost my ride in the middle of the season and don’t know what to do, but also because I just spent $450 on a plane ticket for which I probably wouldn’t be reimbursed. Ick. I had taken the ride specifically so that I wouldn’t be left in the middle of the season with no seat, and then it happened anyway!
I start calling everyone, trying to find some co-driving position over there and something for the season. Within less than 24 hours, Alex Gelsomino had notified Vermont SportsCar of the situation, and I had a call to co-drive with Dave Mirra the next two rounds. Alan had conflicts with Subaru Canada coming to run the Northwestern events and could not attend. Luckily for me, everything aligned just at the right time, and I got to accept the other competing offer, on much better terms this time. I was pretty excited. Now I’d be working with one of my childhood idols, 95 World Rally Champion Derek Ringer, as well as Travis Pastrana, Ken Block, Derek Dauncey (WRC manager for Mitsubishi), and John Buffum...not to mention Dave Mirra who I’ve been a fan of since middle school. Way too cool!
The spread out schedule for the rally means I need to take a week off of school, again, this time at the end of the semester. It’s tough but well worth it. Luckily, my flights and everything land on time, and I drive through the night to Idaho where the hotel is. I meet Dave Wednesday morning, and we go testing. First two things that surprise me are, the car is way slower than I had expected, and Dave’s driving and note-taking are much more progressed than I had thought. His lines were perfect, his reactions were quick, and his commitment was high. He also listens to my input as well as the team’s with an open mind. I’m very impressed. We went to the local elementary school after the test signed autographs for and played with little kids. They loved us, except for when Dave broke a little girl’s bike doing a 180 :)
Thursday and Friday are short days of recce with lots of free time, so Dave and I take good notes and then I’m able to get some school work done in the evening. We hang out and drink a little with the crew in the evening, so I become more familiar with the massive amount of people on the team.
It’s race day, and Dave is set on finishing so he can “graduate” to an Open class car for STPR...and boy do these roads make us wish we had it! We keep out foot to the floor on 1-2km straights, and I might as well read the newspaper on them. We do well on the more technical-ish stages (really nothing too technical out there!), but lose all kinds of time on the fast stages that break the 80mph rule. Dave is happy with the notes and the chemistry within the car, and the team is happy Dave came home to a clean finish. I get to be DD for the after rally party as my initiation, and I drive home a sleepy Derek Ringer back to the airport at 2am.
Before Oregon, the team confirms me for STPR and Maine, so I’ll be able to have a great ride for my home rally in front of my family and friends. Oregon starts well with the twisty spectator stages, and we set respectable times. Dave is proving to be much faster when the power handicap isn’t nearly as bad.
On Day 2, we start the first little spectator stage behind the hotel, and Dave pulls a nice stunt driving move after we clip a haybail, pass the balancing point of two wheels, and very nearly roll the car until Dave turns the wheel hard toward the roll and puts the car back on its wheels. A lucky escape on the first stage! (and most importantly, no damage).
We start the first stage, and Dave is enjoying the technical roads. However, less than two miles in, we come across Mike Fox’s rolled car, which is completely blocking the road. After 15 minutes, we’re able to roll the car over and push it out of the way (but not off the cliff) and transit the stage. It’s halfway into the second day, and just now on the next stage do we got to run a proper rally stage. A few miles from the end, we catch the car ahead of us, and the dust gets worse and worse as we can see he’s only 200 meters ahead. Dave pushes reasonably through the dust. Then, we come across a very long left hander through a cut-out, where all the dust just settled rather than rolling off the cliff. The cut out ends at a big break in the trees and a side road, and Dave thinks the corner ends. However, the corner really ends about 10 feet to the left, and we drive off the cliff at 20mph or less. The car is pointing at about a 70 degree angle down the hill, but to our surprise, it stays there. We’re just stuck and no one can pull us out. Dave is bummed.
Sweep comes and pulls us out, and the car barely has a scratch on it. We go back to service and are allowed to run the last stage of the day, which gets both our spirits back up. When we come into service, we see our names have been put onto Ken Block’s Open class car (who also went out that stage) with a note from Ken. We’re both pumped as now we get to drive the fastest car in the US the last day of the rally! Not such a bad deal after driving the car off the road!
Day 3 is short with only 4 stages, and we’re both eager to try the new car. It’s slightly detuned with 60 less horsepower, but it’s still 1,000 times faster than what we’ve been driving! On the first stage, the car is fully on Ken’s setting and Dave struggles to drive it. We have a slow spin and lose some time, and we’re also quite cautious. The mechanics change the setting, and the next time out, Dave drives the car like he’s been rallying for years. We go 70% and still set 3rd fastest time even while catching the dust of the car in front of us after making 52 seconds up on him. We’re both stoked and know we should have a good year.
The last real stage of the day is 10.6 miles and a lot more forgiving than the last. I know we’ll catch the car ahead, so I try an old school rally trick to get a two minute window in the dust. However, the rally is behind, and the start control worker isn’t having it. He hands me the time card with the next minute, even though we’re guaranteed 3 minutes from checking into the ATC to the start control when we only got two. Bummer. Dave drives brilliantly at 85%, and within 5 miles we caught the car ahead of us and had to slow down. We coasted through the rest of the stage and set an ok time, but it would have been another 3rd fastest for sure.
The last stage for the spectators was a blast in the fast car, and we set tied 3rd fastest time again. The crew welcomes us home at the finish with a huge applause. They’re just happy we didn’t put it off a cliff!
After a good night of partying to celebrate, I hook up with ACP’s crew to get a ride for Calgary in the Rocky Mountain Rally. I always wanted to run the event because of it’s beautiful scenery, and since I was off of school, I figured I’d go do it. The road trip was marvelous, with great scenery and a comfortable ride in ACP’s big rig.
I did a few small jobs for ACP while they reprepped the car, but nothing close to repayable for the 1,000 mile ride to Calgary. I really appreciated it and really couldn’t find a way to say thank you enough.
We roll into Calgary late, and I meet up with my new driver, Andrew Miller, an ex-pat Canadian working in Hong Kong. He came over to run the rally, and the car won’t start. We work all day in the rain, and simply can’t get the car to start. We call everyone, try everything, get everyone to help us, and nothing works. Finally the night before, Warren, who helped build the car, magically gets it to start once. On the morning of race day, the car frequently won’t start, but every hour or so, it does. We take the car to tech, we get registered, and I start frantically marking up the notes for the first day. We start the car and hour before our out time and leave it that way. At least it runs!
We start the first stage in the rain and take it pretty easy. The scenery on the foothills of the Rocky’s is absolutely spectacular and nothing I’ve ever seen before. Even with a conservative pace and Andrew just trying to learn the car, we’re 12th fastest. The following stage, we up the pace slightly, and the rally starts getting fun. We come through a hard right, fairly committed but not too fast in my opinion, and Andrew commits on the power and drives properly; however, we still run a bit wide. The car feels like it’s just not holding well, but maybe I’m spoiled from running in Ken Block’s Open car. The very next corner, however, Andrew enters with the same level of commitment and we slide wide, get off the right side of the road, and then smash a boulder and flip once to land in a shallow creek on my side. Oops. Both of us are ok, but all the windows are smashed and the car does not look pretty at all...especially on my side. Game over just 11km into the rally, and all I can think of is “Wow, it finally happened. After 44 rallies I finally had my first roll!”
Andrew and I are able to flip the car over ourselves, and the car starts and can be (crudely) driven onto the trailer. We spectate the next stage and the medical crew lets us hang out in the ambulance so that we’re warm and dry. We go spectate the next day, but the weather is absolutely atrocious. It’s all torrential rain and sticky mud. We never even make it out to the stages, and it figures, the one year I come to see the beautiful scenery, the weather is as terrible as its ever been!
That’s all for now. My goal is for a timely update after STPR. Look for some cool photos and incars of Dave and I in the new car!
-Alex