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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.
23 August 2008 - Road to Bronze
The past three months of ’08 have produced just as much madness as the first five. Two weeks after Rocky, it was off to start my summer internship at Ernst & Young and to compete in both Dave’s and my home rally, the Susquehannock Trail ProRally, or STPR for short. Dave and I would have Ken Block’s Subaru to enter the entire race, although still slightly detuned. We both entered the event psyched and a little anxious. STPR is probably the most dangerous and difficult round of the championship, it was our first full rally in the fast car, and all of our friends, family, and sponsors would be there to watch.
Dave and I started Day 1 rather conservatively, but stayed within the top 10 on the ridiculously rough and confusing Waste Management Stage. On the reverse running of the stage, Dave turned up the pace, but we lost about 30 seconds driving around in circles because of the confusing, maze-like layout. We entered a tight hairpin left that was so tight we couldn’t even see the correct road to continue out of the turn and ended up driving along a parallel trail that led nowhere. Frightening! Still, we were in a decent position to take back a few places on Day 2.
Day 2 on Asaph we started quick...maybe a little too quick and had a couple of moments. We saw Travis off, but didn’t get a red cross. We raced to the end and set a great time, just to see the stage was cancelled. Bummer. ACP also fell victim to Asaph, so we found ourselves up two more places. We then continued to take 3-4 seconds per mile off Bacon, Moyle, and Bartram to jump 3 more places and then passed Kyle Sarasin stuggling with mechanical issues. This put us all the way up to 6th by the first service. Dave and I were quick, clean, and felt as though we weren’t taking any risks. Perfect.
The next stage, however, that all changed. Less than a mile into the stage we hit a long straight away with a series of small crests and a jump, crest, then easy left at the end of it. As we traveled along the straightaway, I called the jump, crest, and easy left as we were hitting 110mph at the top of 5th gear. Dave wasn’t showing a hint of lifting for the jump, so I assumed he didn’t hear the note, or assumed the jump, crest, and easy left were further ahead. I repeated the note with an urgent tone and raised my voice as we approached the jump, Dave panicked and locked up the brakes, and we spun from 110mph, keeping it in between the trees somehow. As we thought we were nearly stopped, the left rear wheel caught the edge of the embankment, and rolled us down the hill. Game over! Needless to say, neither of us were too happy with the result or each other at the time...but rally is a team sport, and while you always win as a team, you always lose as a team too.
We spent the next few hours in the forest with 95 degree humid weather and the nastiest bugs I’ve had to fight off in a while. The STPR sweep team are true professionals and extracted our car from way down the hillside with ease. Dave and I drove the rally car back to service, and ended our day.
However, we did get the good news that we would be invited for the at-large spot at X Games! Still, Dave and I had something to prove going into our last scheduled rally of the year, the New England Forest Rally.
New England definitely started harshly for myself. I arrived at work early, so I could work a full day and still leave early, just to get stuck in the airport with cancelled and delayed flights for 6 extra hours. Derek Ringer was also delayed too, so we met up at the airport at 2am and got into the hotel at 3:30am, just to wake up at 5:30am for a 12 hour day of recce. Ick. Dave and I were able to stay focus and do a pretty decent recce, albeit a bit conservative after STPR. Our goal from day 1 was just finish, finish, finish.
Various field reversals and re-reversals meant two spectator stages on Day 1 took almost 7 hours. Dave and I started conservatively on the first real stage, and then upped the pace significantly for stage 2. The last stage of the day, Concord Pond, is known for it’s tricky crests and jumps. Dave and I took the advice given to us, and backed off a bit on the classic stage, comfortable in 10th and less than 15 seconds out of 8th after a Day 1 with no attrition and an extremely competitive field up front.
Day 2 started with a spin for us, and a stage time slightly off the pace. However, attrition finally started to arrive for some teams. Matt Johnson retired with engine problems after the first stage. We were now 9th. We turned up the pace to full commitment on the way back, and ended up with a puncture, costing us another minute. However, we held place and even moved up a spot as Kenny Bartram lost a wheel. We were now 8th.
After service, we started the next stage quite quickly. We saw Ken off, now we’re 7th. However, halfway in with 8 miles to go, a slight lapse in concentration meant we ran wide into a ditch and bounced off a berm. While the car kept going, the impact broke the pedal and physically jammed the throttle to the floor. From my perspective, I couldn’t see if the pedal broke or if the physical cable broke. I asked Dave if he could loosen his belts and get it. He asked me if I could get it with my long arms...but I was probably more insulted by this than anything! :-P (come on, my arms aren’t *that* long!). Confused, I told Dave to continue on with the stuck throttle. He was using the brakes to slow the car down, when I told him that the road was pretty much straight for the next 2.5 miles. At this point, I’m sure he thought I was absolutely insane. Sure enough, with 2 miles left in the stage, the brakes went completely. Now we were stuck throttle and no brakes. Dave decided to pull the car over in a safe area with the little brakes we somewhat had, just to discover Otis was also pulled over and out of the rally. Dave was able to bang on the stuck pedal until it came free. We limped to the end of the stage and lost 2 more minutes and 3 positions.
In the regrouping control, Jeff Moyle was nice enough to act as our brake so that we could get back to service safely. It was probably one of the craziest things I’ve done during a rally. We attached a tow rope to Jeff’s car and led him on the road. Whenever we needed to brake, Jeff would step on his brakes and pull us to a stop. Sketchy none the less and the transit was tight. We pulled into the time control with less than 3 seconds for me to hand in my time card. I opened the door and began jumping out with the car still slightly in motion. At the same time, Jeff pulled our car to a stop, giving me big spring as I leaped like Jordan from the foul line right into the control workers. No time penalty.
WeeGee and the crew pulled some miracles during the short service, giving us a completely new brake system on all four corners of the car. Dave and I went steady to the finish, and passed a limping Pat Moro on the last stage to an impressive 7th place finish despite our issues. We were thrilled to say the least!
After all the hard work at Maine, I was looking forward to the party that is X Games, especially for us co-drivers whose workload at the games is light at best. Dave was loving the extra hp, and I went for a couple rides with him Thursday morning. We tagged a barrier, but all in all it felt good and our times were good. We would face 2 time Canadian champ, Antoine L’Estage, in our first round, but seeing he was adjusting to a new car, our chances were looking good.
Thursday night the fun began. I went with a bunch of the rally folks to witness skateboard big air and watch Jim DeChamp (Travis’s friend and co-driver for X Games) attempt the first front flip on a motorcycle. All I have to say is, Danny Way is a beast, and I’m still surprised he’s not dead from all those falls, and GET BETTER JIM. Jim looked to have the front flip down, but ended up bailing and breaking his back. Ouch. We followed the X Games by going out in Hermosa Beach. Awesome time again.
The next morning Dave and I were supposed to test again, but overnight the RA officials decided that anyone with 6 or more runs the day before didn’t get to test today. We were obviously upset since testing was open both days, and we planned our runs on each course on the premise that we would get to run...so the course ended up sitting empty as the people were denied runs to keep everything equal. We weren’t happy, but we were ok. My mom and sister cmae, and that night, we went to the Staples Center to see Dave do BMX BigAir. He should have won, and I’m still mad at those judges! Awesome performance though. Dave killed it, and he’s barely been on a bike this year because he keeps driving rally cars instead! haha. I took the family out to House of Blues in Hollywood for the X Games Party/Matt Johnson’s bday. Again, more fun.
Saturday was an off day...and we didn’t get much of anything done. I woke up late, and then went to bed early for Sunday aka race day.
Converting the entire stadium from Freestyle Moto to rally took a little more than all-nighter of work. The course wasn’t finished when we arrived. We started practice an hour late, and every team got one shot at the jump, the transitions into and out of the stadium, and the whole dirt section. My god, I’d actually have something to do as the co-driver! Some aspects of the course layout were confusing, and Dave and I were able to implement some solutions to make the layout more clear. We hit the jump perfectly the first time, and it was much less frightening than it looks. I mean, you can only get hurt so bad at 47mph (the target jump speed)
Round 1 started. Dave and I were the last pairing. We saw Niall McShea make a rare mistake and lose in the first round after being the fastest all weekend, setting up Dave and I for the opportunity to set the fastest time in the qualifying round. If we could set the fastest time, we could face ACP in the quarter-finals, the only pairing we felt we had a realistic chance of winning. If we weren’t fastest, we’d have to face either Pastrana, Foust, or Block. Winning against them would call for a miracle!
Ok, time for our run against Antoine, and Dave showed why he is the most successful X Games athlete of all time. I was just happy to be sitting beside him witnessing greatness as he nailed every turn with supreme focus the entire run. Antoine didn’t make any mistakes either. We beat him by just being faster and set fastest time. We would get to face ACP now.
However, our car did catch fire but it didn’t affect us much! Plus, we have Vermont SportsCar and WeeGee who could put the car back together no problem.
Round 2 against ACP...and Dave was trying a bit too hard and started getting a little sloppy. I told him to tidy it up a bit, and it was going a little better. However, on the narrow entrance into the stadium, we clobbered the wall and did all sorts of damage. We decided to continue on to the best of our abilities. As we hit the halfway point, we heard the crowd yelling and saw everyone cheering us on. I heard something happened to ACP over the radio, but it was so noisy in the car from all the broken parts, I didn’t know what happened. We thought it was maybe a limp-race to the finish. Dave and I pressed on the best we could, but saw no ACP. We didn’t know if he crashed, or if he had already beaten us, but the least we could do was show rally spirit and finish. We came back into the stadium and every fan was giving us a standing ovation...the noise so loud we could hear it inside the car. We crossed the finish line, thought we lost...looked up at the screen and saw we advanced! ACP did a front flip. Pure madness!
We advanced to the friggin semi-finals...a guarenteed 4th place and a chance at a medal! Holy sh*t!. We were psyched...and WeeGee went on again to frantically work on the car and get us back into the race. They fixed our broken steering, we were rushed out by the TV crews for our match against defending gold medalist Tanner Foust. We raced Tanner hard at the beginning, although Dave was complaining to me about the steering still not being completely right. We pressed on though, and at the halfway point, we were even. Now it was our turn to take the jump. I called out the speeds...we were at 46 at the base of the jump, and then Dave hit 51 by the top. We were going to overjump. We landed hard, and the pit wall came up mighty quick. We center punched it, but it was a soft impact. Dave and I were just fine and still psyched. We shook hands and smiled at the spectacle we put on.
Luck has it, Ken’s car died at the start of his run against Travis. We wanted to extract our car and see if we could run against Ken in the bronze match, but they wouldn’t let us. They instead decided to give us both bronze’s. Sounds good to me!
Obviously, that night I had to go celebrate being an X Games medalist...so I’ll just end my entry here. All in all, X Games was too much fun, and I can’t wait to go back!
Right now, I’m more or less done with rallying in the US for the year. I’m done with my internship too, so all my time is spent trying to learn about rallying in the UK and find possible rides. At this point, I believe if I can get the experience I’m looking for abroad, I can raise the bar for co-drivers in the US as well as pave the way for those after me to fully realize their potential. After all, America will never have any great rally drivers if we never have a system to develop its co-drivers.
-Alex