QuoteFerdinandMartin Losier lost it and wound up against the snowbank. Seconds later Thierry came over the crest and slapped his Fiesta up against the Mitsubishi. You can't get away with anything these days without somebody catching it on video. See starting at 2:42 in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHeMSQb08b0 At 0:20 there's a brief shot of Martin standing in hiby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS12 - Tortue Nord 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAhjt-YirbU I like this stage. It's another long one, 29 km. But this one has a nice flow to it. We're much more confident with our notes for this one. Except for at 3:15, it's "180 L4". Martin is startled when the corner turns out be a bit tighter than a "4". He wants that note to be changed to aby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS11 - Forêt de l'Aigle 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtiOQcFj1MA This one starts off a little odd when the timing lights fail with less than 10 seconds to go. No 5 second countdown, no green light, but Guy shouts "OK Go!". So, off we go. This stage is quite a bit more tight, busy and technical. I had some problems with the notes on this stage, fumbling and stumblingby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS10 - Kitigan Zibi 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im2eG0IgoNc It's kind of important at this service stop not to forget to install the rally lights, because it's going to be dark soon. Finally, we start into the long loop of the forest stages. This time we're running on the Yokohama A034 snow tires. They really do feel completely different than the ice tires we had onby Ferdinand - Community Forum
QuoteJose Pinto How can Martin drive with the sun low on the horizon ahead, he has some sixth sense or radar or something?! Seeing is over-rated. That's what stage notes are for. Here's a great video illustrating just how bad the visibility can sometimes get. This is the short Palomino stage on the Rallye Défi Ste-Agathe, north of Montreal, that's always run in the evening jby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS9 - BlueSea/Bouchette 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiA-h9n4eE4 Another icy stage. At 3:50 we find Pat Richard & Alan Ockwell out with a terminal drive-train issue. This is the same stage they DNF'd on a couple of years ago with a transmission failure. At 5:40 we come to the left turn at the last spectator location. We get a moment of understeer while braking for the turnby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS8 - Farley 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2l_2FrCFJM After a Service break spent digging snow and ice out of the engine compartment, it's straight back to Farley and Bouchette again. We're a bit gun shy this time on Farley. It is unbelievably icy. It's slick and slippery, hence "slickery". We're determined not to stick the car into a snowbank again,by Ferdinand - Community Forum
QuoteFerdinandVittorio Barres, in Car #27, starts into the stage a minute ahead of us, and crashes at that same slippery fast corner... Here is Vitto's in-car video for SS2 - Des Eaux 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSzqo54eVJ4 Wow, did he ever go hard into that snowbank!by Ferdinand - Community Forum
QuoteJose PintoMaybe a stupid question but did you remove the cabin heating from the Nissan? Don't you need some demisting at the windshield? Not stupid at all. Those are good questions. The stock heater assembly is still in the car. However, just like the non-working fuel gauge that Martin has never bothered to fix, the heater controls are also in need of some attention... someday..by Ferdinand - Community Forum
QuoteJose PintoIn such case, couldn't you remove gas from the tank, with a siphon or something? There was no time for that? No time, and it's not permitted. On highway transits between racing stages, or to and from the service park, we are given a certain amount of time to drive to our next destination. It's usually enough time so there's no hurry, and no need for speediby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS7 - BlueSea/Bouchette 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekubp0TKChc I was hoping that, immediately after finishing Farley, Martin would pull over to scoop all the snow out of his radiator, as that would have given me an opportunity to scoop all the snow out of my boots. Instead we first did the transit to the start of BlueSea/Bouchette and only then hopped out. In the meantime a lot of thby Ferdinand - Community Forum
QuoteBob in EverettIf I remember the story correctly, you live east of Germany? There must be few E-30 left in that part of the world. Only just a little bit east, but a very long way south of Germany, if I remember correctly. Great to see you back Gerbrandt!by Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS6 - Farley 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Df7LJSvIN8 This is the stage where it all went wrong for us. That was really very unfortunate because I think this was also the stage where Martin was demonstrating his best driving so far. We haven't done a winter event in a while. Martin doesn't get to practise with this car, unless we're actually competing with it. On theby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS5 - Kitigan Zibi 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npKNbaUjGB0 After four stages, Peter Kocandrle is still first of the 2wd cars and up to 21st overall. Sergei Grishechkin and Ksenia Prokofjeva in a Golf GTi moved into 2nd in 2wd, and 23rd overall 31 seconds behind Peter. Martin and I are 3rd in 2wd, 3.5 seconds behind Sergei and 24th overall. This next stage, Kitigan Zibi, is a BIG stby Ferdinand - Community Forum
Our fuel strategy didn't work out quite as planned, eh. I calculate our anticipated fuel needs based on the combined lengths of transits and stages between available fuel stops. Those distances are the only numbers I actually know for certain. Everything else is estimated. Things like our fuel consumption rate on stages vs transits vs recce are all based on estimates which may or may nby Ferdinand - Community Forum
On the first pass of Des Eaux, Car#21 spun, and Car#27 Vito Bares stuffed his red Audi, both at the same corner. On this second pass, that same corner is even more slippery, and now it's our turn to whack the snowbank at that same corner... At 1:50 into the video, it's R5+/Cr and "whoa!", is that ever slippery!! Good thing the snowbank is relatively soft, because we surby Ferdinand - Community Forum
There's not much to be gained on those first couple of short stages, Marie-Anne and Des Eaux. There's no point in going banzai on these. Sure you might put a couple of seconds on your closest competition, but it's just way too easy to stuff the car into a snowbank and lose a ton of time. It's much too early in this long endurance event to be taking any big risks just yet.by Ferdinand - Community Forum
Thanks Jose. There are plenty more videos still to come, 16 stages in all. It was a tough event starting with 415 kms of recce already on Friday, The rally is run on Saturday and covers 245 kms over 16 stages run at competitive speeds on snow and ice (no studded tires allowed), plus 265 kms of transits travelled between stages, for a total of 510 kms. It starts at 9am, runs all day, and finiby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS2 - Des Eaux 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7eY3EtZhCc Already much discussed on SpecialStage.com, and reiterated at the drivers' meeting before the start of this event, there are new rules and penalties imposed this year regarding safety triangle procedures. Violations are subject to 10-minute time penalties and $500 fines. It is in our own best interests to be able to rely onby Ferdinand - Community Forum
SS1 - Marie-Anne 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5aZYp8PMgY This first stage is just an easy little 2 km run, but it's notorious for catching teams by surprise. It is always treacherously icy. We started on the ice tires, and chose to take a conservative approach in these first two icy opening stages. As expected, our conservative pace saw us only 32nd quickest of the 41 startersby Ferdinand - Community Forum
The Feb 4, 2012, Rallye Perce Neige 2012 was chock-a-block full of adventures. So many stories... Our adventures started on Friday with a full day of two-pass recce, followed by tech inspection, and new this year a shakedown stage. Shakedown was run on the lower half of the icy Des Eaux stage. Sadly I have no video of any of our shakedown runs, because I had already earlier filled the videoby Ferdinand - Community Forum
I knew there had to be someone with a camera at this corner! Here is a great sequence of shots showing how we tipped the car way up on its side on A2 - Upper Old Hastings 1. The front wheel left a neat imprint in the dirt. The rear wheel smacked that tree stump, resulting in a bent upper control arm. Photos by Charles Spivak.by Ferdinand - Community Forum
Quotealanrw I wonder why she never smiles in any of the pictures? Bad teeth? Aha! She does have teeth.by Ferdinand - Community Forum
There is a BMW on the right edge of this photo. One of the undeleted photos shows the BMW's licence plate as "3341 ZK 74".by Ferdinand - Community Forum
I had another idea. I used a file recovery program to "undelete" a lot more photos on the memory stick, hoping those might provide further clues. But, it just more of the same stuff.by Ferdinand - Community Forum
Cab managed to extract the camera's serial number from the image EXIF data. Thanks Cab! Armed with that new info I went through the Nikon website to contact their support people. Nikon Canada of course brushed off my inquiry, telling me that this is "not a Nikon Canada serial number" and therefore they have no registration info for this customer. Duh, I already knew that.by Ferdinand - Community Forum
Quotealanrw I wonder why she never smiles in any of the pictures? Bad teeth? You are correct! She never smiles because of crooked teeth. Her two front teeth overlap slightly. Zoom in on this smile. The crooked teeth don't bother me one bit. She's still gorgeous. Those eyes!by Ferdinand - Community Forum
Quotealanrw I wonder why she never smiles in any of the pictures? Bad teeth? alan You realize now I'm going to have to look through all 1800+ photos again just to find one of her smiling.by Ferdinand - Community Forum
QuoteMichiel 318iStwo license plates are French, any chance you could read the Dutch license plate on the VW Passat (black on yellow). There should also be a number on the right corner of the Peugeot's license plate, in the blue field. Can you read that? It indicates the region the car (département) comes from. The photos in my first post are linked to Photobucket which automatically resby Ferdinand - Community Forum
We're just returned from a week spent vacationing in Cuba. While there I found an 8GB SD memory card containing over 1800 photos dating from September 2009 to September 2010, but no photos of Cuba. The exif data on the images identify the camera as a Nikon D40. I would like to return the SD-card to its owner, but don't know how to contact her. I've done about as much researchby Ferdinand - Community Forum