09 Jun STPR Open 4WD Class Rally Review

Article originally written for American Rally Association here.

Wellsboro, PA (June 9, 2017)

We’re going to be doing our usual post event wrap up a bit differently this week. Instead of doing one large post, we’re breaking up our review into several smaller parts where we’ll going into a bit more detail. Today, we will appropriately open up our STPR review series with Open 4WD class.

David Higgins and Craig Drew won the 2017 Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally this past weekend, outlasting Subaru Rally Team USA teammates Travis Pastrana and Robbie Durant and Fiesta S2000 Turbo Drivers Barry McKenna and Leon Jordan. Finishing third in class were Jon Kramer and Jason Smith, who drove a clean and consistent weekend.

The Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (STPR) is known as one of the most challenging rallies in the country. The two day event features 127 miles of smooth dirt and gravel stages. The roads are tight and fast; and are lined with dense trees and steep embankments. The days are long and go late into the evening, pushing teams to the limit of their endurance.

“Its one of those rallies where if you drive on the limit all the time you won’t get away with it,” said Higgins, “There’s so many long corners that open and tighten a fraction that if you get the speed 2 miles an hour wrong you get on the wrong side of the camber and you go off.”

Friday was a comparatively short day, only four stages and 19 miles of competition. That was a good thing for David Higgins and Craig Drew, who suffered issues almost immediately after setting off on Stage 1.

Early into the stage a turbo pipe cracked on Higgins’ Subaru, leaking boost and forcing the car into road transit mode. In this engine management setting the car produced no boost, lowering engine power to around 100hp. Worse still, road mode also turns off the car’s hydraulic handbrake and locks the differential settings. So not only was Higgins at a lack of power, he was also unable to effectively turn the car.

The difficulty of driving the car quickly was on full display during Friday’s Super Special Stages. Higgins entered the final hairpin and failed to fully rotate the car, forcing him to make a three point turn in the narrow track. Higgins and Drew ultimately lost nearly a minute and a half to the rally leaders on Friday, putting them in a tough spot Saturday morning.

Friday was much kinder to Barry McKenna and Leon Jordan. The Irish drivers entered STPR having only one full rally under their belt in the new Fiesta S2000 Turbo, though you weren’t able to tell from the timing boards. The team flew through Friday’s stages, finishing the day sitting comfortably in second and splitting the Subarus.

STPR’s first day was also kind to Travis Pastrana and Robbie Durant. The pair came into STPR second in championship and STPR represented a need to win event for Pastrana, but it also represented Pastrana’s bane. In three out of the four previous years he’s competed here, Pastrana had a rally ending incident on the Asaph stage. Pastrana knew that he needed a large lead by the end of the day and he made it happen, thanks in part to Higgins’ engine issues.

Saturday, the second day of the rally, saw competitors tackle nearly 110 stage miles over the course of 10 hours. Many stages were over 10 miles in length and the final forest stage, Mine Hole, was a 24.5 mile sprint to the finish.

First order the day was Pastrana’s nemesis, the Asaph stage. Pastrana started the stage holding a 36 second lead over Barry McKenna and a 1:13.6s gap to Higgins. The lead allowed Pastrana to back off a fraction and defeat the stage, though it was a close one. Pastrana’s tail stepped out on a high speed corner, clipping a tree at nearly 120 mph and ripping the rear bumper off the car. Pastrana described himself as “white as a ghost” after the nearly rally ending hit.

Pastrana finished the morning loop having dropped 10 seconds to Higgins, that would unfortunately become a theme for the day. On SS8 Lebo, Pastrana lost and additional 40 seconds to Higgins after suffering a flat. By SS12 Randall II, Pastrana’s lead had shrunk to 10.8 seconds. That’s when Pastrana went wide a third time, debeading a tire and losing over 3 minutes.

“I messed up the corner before and tried to make up for it in the next. I should know better than that,” said Pastrana, “at the end of the day when you’re given that much good luck, and not come away with the win…that’s what championships are made of.”

The lost tire cost Pastrana over 3 minutes, and the rally win. He ultimately finished STPR in second position and managed to find the positives in that accomplishment.

“I didn’t wrap my Subaru around a tree!,” exclaimed Pastrana at the podium ceremony, “it was a lot fun, we almost died a lot. But other than that we finished this one!”

Also having a tough second day at STPR were Barry McKenna and Leon Jordan. The pair had a very promising start to the day, taking an outright stage win on Asaph – their first in the American Rally Association.

They continued to post competitive stage times for the remainder of the morning loop and maintained their second position over Higgins until the first running of Lebo. The Fiesta drivers ended up wide after entering a corner with a bit too much speed and clipped a tree with the left rear quarter of the car.

“I kinda thought the corner opened up a bit, but it had actually gotten tighter,” said McKenna, “we were trying to nurse the car through [a small transmission leak] by keeping it up high the gears and I suppose that by keeping it up in the gears we kept the speed too far up too.”

The result was a lot of bent metal, but the car seemed to have held up mechanically. McKenna drove the car into service under its own power, with all wheels pointing forward. He told ARA the reason he retired from the event was due to dust intrusion through his broken tailgate. The car could still be driven at pace, he was simply unable to see or breath well enough to warrant continuing. Like Pastrana, McKenna found the positives in his performance at STPR, choosing to focus on his stage win and ever increasing pace.

“The speed will come, no doubt about it, the speed will come,” said McKenna, “we just need to be more consistent with finishing rallies.”

David Higgins and Craig Drew started Saturday knowing they needed to make up time and put pressure on Pastrana and McKenna. To that end, Higgins started the day on soft tires, hoping to offset their increased wear with faster stage times. That plan didn’t pan out, by the morning loop’s end, the soft tires had worn away.

Undeterred, Higgins fell back onto hard compound tires and began to steadily claw time back from Pastrana. Higgins is a master of driving a clean, consistent, rally and at STPR that skill was on full display. After changing onto the appropriate tire, Higgins bested Pastrana on every one of the day’s remaining stages. Higgins partially credited himself with Pastrana’s off and subsequent flat tire, saying it was a result of pressure he put on his teammate.

“It wasn’t an easy rally, for sure. We had to push hard for it,” said Higgins, “It’s just about getting it all together and not giving up till the end. The only thing we could do was go flat out, today. Keep pushing hard, keep putting on the pressure, and keep pulling some time on them.”

Join us next week when we review the Restricted Open and Production 4WD classes. Let us know if you enjoyed this more detailed weekend review and if you would like to see more of them going forward. See you next week.

Photo Credit: Peter Lapinski (Top, 1, 2, 5, 6), Matt Stryker (3, 4, 7)

About American Rally Association (ARA)

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