Stage Notes

A regular update & Recap of Cherokstars Racing Events

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EWRC Profile

CARS Profile

October 27, 2024 | Gravel Witch Trial

February 4, 2023 | Rallye Perce-Neige

April 2, 2022 | Rallye Perce-Neige

November 20, 2021 | Rally of the Tall Pines

September 18-19, 2021 | Ascutney II Hillclimb

July 30-31, 2021 | New England Forest Rally (NEFR)

June 26-27, 2021 | Burke Hillclimb

June 13, 2021 | Hoon in June Rallysprint

May 15-16, 2021 | Ascutney Hillclimb

February 21, 2021 | Out of Hibernation Rallysprint

November 15, 2020 | Fall Send Off Rallysprint

October 18, 2020 | Fall Into Winter Rallysprint

October 27, 2024 | Gravel Witch Trial

October 27, 2024 | 1st in Class/4th Overall | Codriver - Gabriela Ribeiro (Team O'Neil Rally School)

February 4, 2023 | Rallye Perce-Neige

February 4, 2023 | Rallye Perce-Neige | 3rd in Class (National Production 4WD) & 18th overall (of 31) | Maniwaki, Canada

More to come!

April 2, 2022 | Rallye Perce-Neige

April 2, 2022 | Rallye Perce-Neige | 5th in Class (National Production 4WD) & 20th overall (of 30) | Maniwaki, Canada

Our second CRC event, Rallye Perce-Neige. Typically this rally is in the middle of winter in February, however with Covid restrictions, they moved the event back to April....mud season.

Even before we get to the rally, recce was quite interesting. Perce-Neige is one of the only events that lets competitors conduct recce in their rally cars due to the usual brutally snowing and icy conditions. That was our plan. The morning of recce, we thought an earlier stuck caliper issue was just a fluke, but when we hopped in the rally car and set off for recce, it proved still an issue. Making a quick decision to return to service and swap cars, it saved us some time and allowed us to get our notes written from scratch (we had not raced at Perce-Neige prior).

When we were on our way back to service from recce, we messaged our friends that were crewing for FrogRacing (Mike and Pavlo) saying our caliper was still an issue. They were awesome to volunteer to take a look at it and swap it with a spare we had on hand. They were able to get it fixed by the time were were done with recce and were all set!

Saturday: race day. No issues on the first few stages. We selected gravel tires which was the perfect choice for the morning stages. Once back at service, we swapped tires for studded snow tires. The afternoon stages were mainly mud, ice/snow, mud, and more mud. The notoriously long stage, Tortue, is 30+km and took us over 30 minutes. Trudging through about a foot of mud at times and water splashes where we needed to slow to a crawl to avoid water coming over the hood of the car.

It was an interesting rally to say the least. And we finished. It wasn't our fastest or best performance so far, but it was our first time using our own written notes. Which definitely knocked a lot of confidence down, coupled with the fact we didn't get all the passes during recce due to our caliper issue.

Overall, it was a great time and we learned a ton! Huge, huge thanks to Alex McCrady and Ian Bates for being our crew and keeping us out there! Additionally, another huge thanks to Michael Morbois and Pavlo Zakalyk for helping us with the caliper swap!

November 20, 2021 | Rally of the Tall Pines

November 20, 2021 | Rally of the Tall Pines | 1st in Class (National Production 4WD) & 9th overall (of 29) | Bancroft, Canada

Our first Canadian (CRC) event, Rally of the Tall Pines was absolutely epic. The roads, volunteers, other teams, and overall feeling were amazing. Unfortunately, the event was a no-spectator event due to Covid restrictions put in place, that didn't stop people from sneaking out on the stages to get a glimpse of the action. And that excitement and enthusiasm was felt in the car as we drove by.

With the weather up in the air, we started off thinking we were going to use snow tires, but once we saw that it was going to be primarily gravel conditions, gravel tires were the obvious choice. Also, given the rough nature of the roads, we absolutely would have experienced punctures had we gone with snow tires (we punctured a snow tire on recce, so we knew it was going to be rough).

We were out on the stages by about 9:30AM or so on Saturday and finished the event at about 10PM at night. Our first rally with night stages, it is an entirely different experience racing at night.

Overall, starting out the event at 2nd to last, we made our first podium with a 1st in class win and ended up finishing 9th overall (out of 29 entries). This was huge for us. We kept it clean and steady on the stages and it paid off! It was an awesome event and we will be back!

September 18-19, 2021 | Ascutney II Hillclimb

Ascutney II Hillclimb: the battle of the NAs. Kathy Moody and Amy Dilks took on CherokStars Racing as the only two cars in rally class NA (R2-NA). After Kathy posted a killer time in the afternoon, we had to up our game. We followed up with a personal best time of 03:28.941 to pull ahead of her by just a few seconds.

Overall, really happy with our performance as we nailed almost all of the turns just about the best we could given the power of our car.

July 30-31, 2021 | New England Forest Rally (NEFR)

NEFR was simply put, awesome. It was our first full stage rally and started off in a very intense way. With the introduction of RallySafe into the ARA events for 2021, the start of each stage is very much watch the screen and send it when the timer gets to zero. We are used to having a start line marshal that guides you to the start line and counts you down when it's time to start. Neither of those were really present with the introduction of RallySafe.

Concord Pond was the stage that is run two times. Each run, the car directly in front of us had an off and rolled off stage (all crews were ok), but these incidents definitely impacted our overall pace on the first two runs.

We experienced an issue with the RallySafe unit where it first displayed green "Crew OK" but then as soon as we were a few seconds past the crew that was out of the car, we received an "SOS" alert on the screen. The rest of the stage, Mags and I were distracted by the mixed signals of the RallySafe unit and I drove what I saw for the duration. Nonetheless, we finished out the rest of the day's stages (SS1-SS5) strong and consistent after settling into a better pace after that.

At the end of day two we had a night service where our crew checked over pretty much everything on the car. No serious damage or issues, just some loose parts from all the rough stages.

Day 2 consisted of 9 stages - starting with Sturtevant Short and ending with North Road. The transit into Sturtevant is absolutely brutal. Huge rocks, narrow road, glad we have the underbody protection! But it's actually one of my favorite stages at the conclusion of the weekend!

After the first leg of stages, we went in for service 1. Again, crew attended to the car. No issues, and just checking over the car for loose nuts and bolts. After the second leg of stages, we returned again for service 2. No issues, other than a bent wheel.

After the second service, we transited to North Road (the last stage of the event) and had an absolute blast. North Road is particularly special to me since it's where I spectated before - so I remember all the spectator points.

After almost going off right at the finish, we finished NEFR with smiles on our faces and met all the spectators, workers, and volunteers at the end of North Road.

Thanks to our crew and all the volunteers/organizers who made this awesome event possible!

Results:
10th in Class NA4WD of 14 cars
44th overall out of 83 cars entered
Overall time of 2:00.24.9 (30 seconds of penalty)

Crew:
Manu Cecchet
Margaret Sharron
Elijah Hammarlund
Tim Loff
Ian Bates

Photo Credit: Ian Pouliot

Stage Onboards:

Photo Credit: David Cosseboom

Photo Credit: Daggerslade

Photo Credit: Ridgelight Studio

June 26-27, 2021 | Burke Hillclimb

Burke Hillclimb was our second ever hillclimb and first time at Burke Mountain. Overall, the two-day event was really fun. Our main goal was to practice writing stage notes from scratch (we will likely have to do this for any Canadian rally event we plan to do in the future) during our few recce runs on Friday evening after going through safety tech inspection.

Day 1 were all practice runs (including a fun run in the rain) and Day 2 was competitive timing. Even though we didn't have the fastest time of the day (there are plenty of cars there with 500+ HP) we had consistent and good times relative to our car and rally class.

Results:
1st in R2 Class... of 2 cars :D and a best time of 2:54.10

Photo by Eric Amato

June 13, 2021 | Hoon in June Rallysprint

The 2021 Hoon in June Rallysprint was hands down our favorite event thus far. With dry conditions and perfect temperatures, the gravel roads at Team O'Neil were simply perfect!

The new to us rear differential (special thanks to Vu Tran for the hardware) that we installed (along with help from Manu at FrogRacing) after our Ascutney Hillclimb event had no issues and, overall, the car performed top notch.

Our class, AWD Limited, was the largest class of the day with 10 cars. Starting in 5th for run order, we were towards the front of the pack with high expectations from the group! With ARA's NEFR (New England Forest Rally) just weeks away at this point, we were using the Hoon in June rallysprint as a shakedown to that event. We're thinking that the rallysprint's dry conditions most closely represent what we will experience at NEFR given the event is in late July.

Early on in the day, it was a close pack with Caleb Pocock from Pocock Racing, Rob Bean from 2Up Rally, and CherokStars all competing for position with only a few seconds between the team on each of the first 8 stages. CherokStars had a slight mishap that ended up in a stall on stage 7 and resulted in a loss of about 16 seconds worth of time. At the end of the day, Caleb pulled ahead and finished 1st in class, Rob Bean in 2nd, and CherokStars in 3rd.

As usual, huge thanks to Team O'Neil for hosting this event, all the workers and volunteers that made the event possible, and our helpful crew!

Results:
3rd in class (AWD Limited)
5th overall (of 21 competitors) with a cumulative time of 43:41.80.

Crew:
Tim Loff
Ian Bates

May 15-16, 2021 | Ascutney Hillclimb

Ascutney Hillclimb was Cherokstars Racing first hillclimb event. It was a new experience and a fresh course to practice working together on pace notes as we went into the event with New England Forest Rally in mind knowing it's just about 2 months away.

We weren't able to do recce on Friday night so it was more challenging than expected to get our pace notes to line up to what we were seeing in the first run. The course was awesome with the exception of the expected bumpy section for the last 45 seconds or so.

Our fastest run time overall was 3:51.695. Not as fast as we would have liked, but we're not in a turbo car and 3rd gear doesn't have a ton of power in our car, this results in really floating between the top of 2nd gear and bottom of 3rd.

Day 2 we noticed there was a slight leak from the rear differential. Looks like it's coming from the inner seal where the axle goes into the diff. We still finished the event, but will be on the hunt for a new rear diff!

Results:
3rd in class with a best time of 3:51.695

February 21, 2021 | Out of Hibernation Rallysprint

Super icy conditions at Team O'Neil for the Out of Hibernation rallysprint meant studded tires! Morning time temps were in the single digits, but warmed up a bit once the sun came out.

11 teams were competing in total, all with studded tires except for one car. An off in recce by one of the cars meant a slight delay, but we were able to get in 11 stages in total - lots of seat time for the day.

The stages were initially covered with an inch or two of snow, but quickly became polished ice after a few runs. The studded tires helped a ton, but we were able to get plenty sideways. Our approach was just keep the car on the road and don't get stuffed in a snow bank. This resulted in very consistent stage times.

Our newly installed foot heater worked like a charm as well and sent warm air to our footwells.

Results:
1st in class. Overall time of 39:26.80 and overall position of 3rd based on total stage/transit time.

Crew:

Ian Bates

November 15, 2020 | Fall Send Off Rallysprint

Dry race conditions for the Fall Send Off rallysprint were a first for CherokStars Racing. The Federal gravel tires performed great and had tons of grip. Pebble ran great again with no issues.

Our friends, Emmanuel Cecchet from FrogRacing, did have engine trouble from a faulty boost controller and lost their engine on the last stage.

Results:
Overall time of 31:55.30 and 5th in class against Dylan Gondyke, Caleb Pocock, Joseph Verge, Willis Daugherty, TJ Pullen, and Paul Rowley.

Crew:

Fred Duell
Ian Bates

October 18, 2020 | Fall Into Winter Rallysprint

The Fall Into Winter rallysprint was our 3rd rallysprint. Conditions were cold, wet, and slippery. The stages were challenging in places that were wet and off camber.

Results:
Overall time of 30:34.60 and 4th in class against Dylan Gondyke, Caleb Pocock, Kadence Verge, TJ Pullen, and Ian Pouliot.

Crew: