First off I want to thank
Bodyarmoroutlet.com who is my first paying sponsor (and hopefully not my last!)
The emergency knife I picked up from the
Granite State Police Supply retail store (a division of
Bodyarmoroutlet.com, located in Windham, NH) is well within reach should I ever need it to cut out of my harnesses but fortunately I had no use for it this weekend.
We (my codriver Ben Nadeau and myself) left for the event on early Friday morning and arrived some 1/2 a day later at about 6PM after stopping at Staples for some notepaper for stage notes and a new pencil to write them with.
Dinner consisted of a well over two pound burrito that the restaurant we went to would give you a tshirt for and take your picture for its website. I was unable to finish mine but Ben and two other guys at our table were able to finish the challenge--though were only told after the fact that unfortunately the restaurant had no tshirts, promptly gave them like 10% off their meal and took their photo. From the sound of things later, the meager discount was not worth the pain! A few beers later and it was off to bed in our tents.
The morning started around 7 AM with a wakeup serenade over the facility's PA system. By around 10AM we were beginning to give out demo rides to Hyperfest attendees. I took the first few rides and likely drove far too aggressively for what was just a glorified practice session. After lunch I handed the reigns over to my codriver Ben Nadeau to do the driving figuring that since the truck was not his vehicle he would likely be more careful with it than I would. Ben did most of the afternoon rides and finished up in fine fashion.
The evening's festivities were solid. The end of the Drift competition--not very exciting except for a few brief moments and then the Daisy Dukes contest which was a vast disappointment. It was very brief interspersed with a U2 cover band and the women involved were 50% Wal Mart material and 50% fairly attractive. Regardless it was soon overwith and we went back to drinking, during which my co-driver was ejected from the bed of the big truck we were driving around in when the driver unexpectedly hit the gas. Roadrashed and bruised he soldiered on and downed some Advil and went to bed.
Sunday was raceday. Hyperfest is a decidedly laid back affair and the racing didn't really start till about 11AM. The course was done in loops of 1.2 miles per lap at 3 laps per session for the most part. The course was very tight and very twisty and I more or less drove around it redlined in first gear with brief moments of second gear. This was NOT the best course for the Nissan Frontier to excel at given its lack of cornering and lack of power coming out of the numerous turns.
Still, the Frontier's best aspect came through--its reliability. Out of the 23 original entrants, only 13 finished with 10 DNFs. While the NISMO Stuff Frontier backed by
Bodyarmoroutlet.com finished 12th in the event and perhaps could have been better had I driven better in the early stages of the event, I'll take the finish gladly.
The 12th place finish overall puts the team in 2nd place overall for the year in the Atlantic Rally Cup 2WD standings behind the very fast Ford Focus of Andrew Frick with three events to go.
