Drama at Rally Colorado Sets the Stage for the California Rally Series Championship Return to the Gorman Ridge Rally

Los Angeles – Rally Colorado made its debut on the California Rally Series (CRS) Championship calendar last month in spectacular fashion.  Set in the mountains in the north-west corner of the state, Rally Colorado featured complex stages with large elevation changes and breathtaking scenery.  Variable weather also played a factor with monsoon thunderstorms rolling through adding to the drama. On Saturday August 24th the CRS championship returns to the Hungry Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Park for the Gorman Ridge Rally, one of the oldest events on the calendar at 40 years since the first running.  Located just over an hour north of Los Angeles, the rally features a compact, spectator friendly format with twelve stages packed into a single day of racing. As in years past, the roads comprise a twisty and technical course, with big air expected over the famous jumps on Wheatfield Trail.

Open Lite was the class to watch in Colorado, with brothers Dave and Mike Brown winning not just the class but the event overall in their Subaru Impreza RS.  They had a clean sweep of stage wins in their home event, which solidifies their lead coming into the Gorman Ridge Rally. Second place in class went to Krishna Gandhi who rolled his Subaru Impreza wagon on the last stage, but kept going to cross the finish line in true press-on-regardless fashion!  Going into the Gorman Ridge Rally there is a close battle for second place between last year’s championship team of driver Kurt Northup and co-driver Will Smith, and Michael Seidman and co-driver Tommy Luhrs. The pair of Subarus will be battling each other on the twisty stages and keeping the Brown brothers honest.  The Gorman stages can be unforgiving, with many overconfident drivers ending up stuck on a berm, car teetering over the edge of a cliff.

CRS members in the Open Four-Wheel Drive class had some hard luck in Colorado, with both the teams of Travis Fienhage / Ryan Dunham and Ernie Manansala / Steven Harrell retired by the end of the first stage.  Manansala’s heroic crew was able to replace the transmission in his Subaru overnight and return for Saturday’s stages. The stages at Gorman will provide Manansala an opportunity to move up the championship standings.

Performance-Stock, the production based two-wheel drive class for cars less than $4,000 Blue-Book has been a mainstay in the CRS championship for decades, and the entry list for Gorman shows the class is still going strong.  With six entries, it is the largest class in the rally! Driving a VW Golf GTI, the wife and husband team of Jen and Terry Stonecipher have a large lead in the championship thanks to their double win at Idaho Rally International earlier this season.  They will face competition from Chris Palermo and Andres Bautista in a Toyota Tacoma, as well as Travis Fienhage and John Dillon. Fienhage rolled his Subaru at Rally Colorado, but will be competing at Gorman in a borrowed Dodge Neon.

The large displacement, two-wheel drive CRS-5 class has Brian Tullio returning in his Mazda MX-3.  Tullio has been very fast in that car, but was forced to withdraw from High Desert Trails earlier this season with overheating issues.  A strong finish at Gorman would move him up the leaderboard.

In the small-displacement two-wheel drive CRS-2 class, Kyle McLennan and Nick Cheever also suffered from bad luck in Rally Colorado.  A transmission failure in their Ford Escort forced them to withdraw after three stages. As if that wasn’t enough of a setback, after repairing the transmission, McLennan rolled the car at a rallycross just two weeks before the Gorman Ridge Rally.  After a mad scramble to pound the body panels back into shape the team will be ready to take the start this Saturday.

The Gorman Ridge Rally has a reputation for Side-by-Side (SxS) utility vehicles fighting with the cars for the overall lead.  This year promises to be no different with Stephane Verdier and Erica Sacks, who will be competing in the SxS Production Turbo class with their Polaris RZR XP Turbo.  Verdier hold the stage record on three of the stages being run this year, so expect them to be setting top times and possibly clinching the class championship.

The Gorman Ridge Rally is based in Lebec, CA, located just one hour north of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.  The rally features 48 miles of hard-packed dirt stages located within the Hungry Valley Off-Road Vehicle Park. For more information, including a spectator guide with instructions on how to see the action in person, visit http://gormanridgerally.com/.

The California Rally Series is the premier performance rally championship in the southwestern United States.  The Series incorporates events from various sanctioning bodies in order to create a meaningful regional championship for its members.  The Series celebrates more than 40 continuous years of performance rally, making it the longest running rally series in the United States.  To learn more about the California Rally Series visit www.californiarallyseries.com and follow @crspress on twitter. 

Photographs by Jon Seaton Dash-n-Cars https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYUSnXeU_BSGg94Mvifz8aQ