Triple Threat Challenge

By coincidence, the Cascade Sports Car Club's August Friday night Course Rally, The 41st anniversary Mountains to the Sea Tour Rally and the Oregon Rally Group Rallycross all fell on the same weekend.  Ralliest being what they are, saw this as an opportunity to test one's skills in a trap rally, a tour rally and a Rallycross over the course of three days.  Simon Lavear seized the opportunity and created a scoring system to count one's finish in class in each event for an overall winner of the weekend and called it the Triple Threat Challenge.

R.Dale and Paul teamed up together for the first time since 2000.  They would use the same 2004 Subaru Baja that  R.Dale drove in the 2004 Alcan Winter Rally.

Friday night found the crews driving around the countryside outside of Vancouver Washington.  In spite of a good effort, the team would finish 2nd in Unlimited Class to the reigning National Champion, Monte Saager and his wife Victoria.  Not a bad start though.

Saturday brought great weather, beautiful roads and an awesome rally ending at Seaside, Oregon just like the first Mts. to the Sea Rally 41 years ago.  R.Dale was there for that one too and in fact stopped as his friend's John Davis's house on the trip up from Arizona with whom he ran that very first event in 1965.  Today would bring another 2nd Unlimited, this time losing to Russ and Katy Kraushaar winning the overall for the 5th time.  This means the Kraushaar name goes back on the perpetual trophy for the 13th time as brother Rod has won once and R.Dale 6 times.

Sunday morning the crews drove into Astoria to the Clatsop County Fair grounds for a great day of rallycrossing. For the two rallys, drivers and navigators would share points accumulated for the Triple Threat, but today it was every man for themselves.  The Baja runs in the most populous class along with the WRX's, STI's EVO's and Audi Quattro's.  This was going to be a challenge.  Paul and R.Dale took turns at the wheel.  Paul attacked the course and was positioned well after two runs.  R.Dale was getting the hang of it but could get no closer that 4 seconds to Paul.  After the second run, the course was realigned as it was getting quite rutted in several spots creating a roll over possibility.  On the first run after the realignment, R.Dale missed one of the first gates and thus was awarded a ten second penalty.  This would cost him greatly dropping him to 7th in class in the Rallycross.  This then resulted in a tie for 6th for the Triple Threat Challenge.  Paul, however would go on to kick some ass and win the class. This is a great lesson for some of the new guys.  It's driving skill that wins races not a bunch of gimmicks.  A little humility was in store for the various WRX and EVO drivers having been beaten by a "pick-up truck."

Congratulations to Paul for winning outright the first, and we hope the first in a long string of Triple Threats.

And special thanks to Simon Levear for dreaming this whole thing up and to all the members of CSCC and Oregon Rally Group for putting on a really fun week-end.

Triple Threat Results

Mountain to the Sea Results