New England Forest Rally starts July 16th 2 SAABs entered!
July 9th, 2010Two classic SAAB’s are set to compete in 19th running of the New England Firest rally starting on Friday July 16th .
The two day event will feature over 100 miles of tough rally stages and is hosted at Sunday River Resort in Newry, Maine.
The SAABrally.com supported team of Sorensen/Jenny have once again entered their 1975 SAAB 99 in Group 5. They are fresh off a class win at STPR in June and excited to be returning to Maine again this year. “The SAAB is particulary well suited to the stages in maine; The roads are rough enough to take full advantage of the SAAB’s inherantly tough chassis and suspension” said driver Luke Sorensen.
Also raising a lot of excitment is the return of a North American SAAB rally legend Mike White to the wheel after many years. Mike’s well known for his successfull campaign of a 1980 SAAB 99 in the late 90’s and he’s at it again this time with a well prepared 1984 SAAB 900 entered in Group 2 class.
see http://newenglandforestrally.com/ for more details.
This is probably the most significant finish that we have ever had as a team. 24 2wd teams set out in hopes of claiming one of the top 6 positions and the Max-attack prize money. The stages in west virginia are absolutely unrelenting. In places they are rough as a jeep trail, other places fast as an expressway, but always VERY VERY twisty. Nearly every blind crest is followed by a sharp turn… usually off camber and often on the side of the mountain. The stages run on friday are some of the most intimidating i’ve ever seen. One slip up and you’ll be lucky to get caught by a tree before rolling down an 800 ft ravine. The goal for friday was to set consistant but conservative times that ensured us a good position for the max-attack two wheel drive championship. The stages friday were rumored to be very rough and we’d need to survive them to keep in the running. Saturday we would assess our position and drive accordingly. On the first stage in we had a major impact with a rocky washout across the stage caused by rain the day before. We hit it HARD and it kicked the drivers side up of the car up in the air several feet and for a minute it felt like we might roll. Luckily the car came down solidly on all fours without missing a beat. Several other cars that hit the same ditch were not so lucky. At the first service it was discovered that the impact had bent the sump guard rather severely but no other damage was found. The stages on saturday were epic. These are the roads that rally drivers dream about; endless turns, rough enough to weed out the week, and fast enough to get in trouble if your co-driver blinks. We had some great stage times were even able to beat the megafast Sarasin and Burmiester outright on a couple stages. The stages were quite abrasive and our tires were consumed at an extraordinary rate. We finished the last couple stages on basically bald tires. This left us at quite a dissadvantage to the other crews that were fitting new tires at every service but nontheless we were able to hold our own with a top ten finish and 5th (should have been 4th if a competetors penalty points were properly scored) in max-attack securing us $1000 in prize money. We have some great photos and in car from the event we will be posting soon.