Axle Failure Leads to DNF at Pikes Peak for Metalmarks VW

RICHMOND, Vermont – The Metalmarks VW Golf of Chris Havas and Dave

Kean almost made it to the top of Pikes Peak, but almost is not good enough. The failure of a clip that holds the axle in place left the team parked alongside the road that winds up to the top of Colorado’s most famous mountain. On a normal day it would have just been an annoyance, but this mishap occurred during the annual running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

As part of the Sports Car Club of America ProRally Championship presented by Hot Wheels, the hill climb was a little different this year for the ProRally cars, consisting of several stages on different parts of the Pikes Peak road, ending with a pair of runs up the full 12.4 mile, 156-turn race course. Other classes running the hill climb made only one official run after a couple of practice and qualifying runs on shorter sections of the hill road.

“On Stage 4, just before the axle popped out, a switch that controls the engine computer got knocked to the wrong setting and the car started stalling under braking,” reported Havas. “Stage 4 was a full run of the Pike's Peak hill climb course and I was hoping for a full run to compare with last year's time. The DNF left us wondering what might have been because our half-way time to Glen Cove was only 4 seconds off Shepherd's Dodge and was easily the fastest we'd done the lower section."

Havas, Kean and their independently funded VW were up against some formidable competition from the Dodge-backed team of SRT-4s, driven by Doug Shepherd and many time SCCA ProRally Champion Paul Choiniere, and the factory-backed Pontiac of Rhys Millen. “The design and building of our VW is done by myself and a couple of friends,” said Havas, who has beaten the Dodges on several occasions. “The Dodge team had a couple of cars and a well trained crew, including someone to tweak their engine management chips between runs.” The Dodge team claimed 380 horespower for their turbocharged engines, while Millen’s Pontiac was rated at 400 horsepower. Havas’ home-grown VW powerplant has been dyno-ed at 230 horsepower, quite good for a nearly stock engine.

“Tire choice turned out to be quite important as well,” continued Havas. “Part of the Pikes Peak road is paved, part is hard packed dirt and part is loose dirt, so a tire that is good for one surface will probably not be good on others. In addition, there was snow near the top of the mountain, so pavement tires were pretty useless there. We chose to use a gravel tire and it worked well for us, giving decent traction on the pavement and much better traction on the unpaved portions. Many teams used hand-cut slicks and gave up a lot of traction as the surface got looser. As it turned out the gravel tires were not really a good choice for the snow, but they were optimum for the lower part which was rather muddy.”

But the Metalmarks team effort ended with the axle failure on the first run at the 12-mile stage, which was stage four in the SCCA ProRally scoring. A later run at the full length of the hill, which was to be stage five, had to be cancelled due to a severe thunderstorm that dropped considerable rain and hail on the mountain.

The next event for the Metalmarks Rally Team will be the Maine Forest Rally on July 30-31, based out of Rumford, Maine. Havas has taken class wins several times at Maine, including the debut of the current VW at the 2002 Maine Forest Rally.

# # #

Metalmarks Rally Team is based out of Burlington, Vermont. Their rally car is a 2001 Volkswagen Golf with a 1.8-liter turbocharged VW engine.

Sponsors of the Metalmarks VW include:

Smokehouse Sausage of Boston
Mid-Atlantic Trading, Inc.
1-800-VW-PARTS
Griffin Thermal Products
PIAA lighting
Simon’s – Gracey’s Stores
Wink Timber Media Agency

For more on the Metalmarks Rally Team, visit their web site at www.Metalmarks.com.

# # #