Katinger.com

When I was in college I interned at a small interactive agency in Rochester in order to get out of my other college job in retail hell, and to get more experience in what I already knew would be my chosen industry. Though my internship was relatively short, I kept in touch with the owner of the company over the years. Recently he told me bought a Rally Car and was going to run it in local SCCA and NASA stage rally events. I told him that I would be more than happy to help out with the car and would also love to be his navigator/co-driver if he needed one. I wasn't sure he would ever take me up on the offer. He did.

After the heartbreak of a DNS (did not start due to mechanical issues right off the trailer) at Rally New York, we came to last weekend's Maine Forest Rally with the basic hope of simply completing all six stages of the Club Rally event. It was my first time as navigator and I was quite intimidated and nervous about screwing up 1) the transit directions between stages and/or 2) getting the timing incorrect when entering a stage after a transit.

It turned out that we did pretty well for our first time running. We actually scored 3rd in our class (Production GT). We got groovy little trophies and got to go up on stage to accept them at the ceremony and all that jazz.

The car is a 1991 Toyota Celica All-Trac formerly owned by none other than Jason Priestley of "Beverly Hills 90210" fame. I guess Jason sold off all his race cars after he was critically injured while driving in the Infinity Pro Series (an IRL feeder series). The car was originally built by famous driver turned car builder Rod Millen. My driver bought the car through a broker online and had it shipped out to CT from California. After a ton of work and upgrades, the car ran great all day, even after a rough exit off of the starting ramp for the first transit.

All-in-all we are pretty thrilled with our first real outing in the car and are looking forward to our next event. We have to complete one more club event to move up a seed. Once we move up a seed we will get to use stage notes as well as a route book (example route book page). This will complicate matters quite a bit for me...then we'll really see how well we communicate as driver and co-driver.

Maine Forest Rally: Club Rally Results

(Photos: OnALimbRacing.com)

Here are some shots taken by my former boss and our crew man for the day Michael Fay.