Flat Out Fight to the Finish at the Colorado COG Rally
Apex, NC (September 22, 2005)

Event - Colorado COG Rally - Round 7 of the Rally America Championship
Location - Steamboat Springs
Video - COG video @ http://www.FlamecrusherUSA.com

In what will be remembered as one of the most exciting rallies they've ever done, Matthew Johnson and Wendy Nakamoto, supported by North Coast Subaru, charged harder than ever before over the dusty northern Colorado roads. After a class win at the Maine Forest rally in early August and Ojibwe Forests rally in Minnesota in late August they were in sitting in a close third place in the championship for the season behind second place and local Colorado favorite Tanner Foust and the current Production GT championship leader Eric Langbein both also driving Subaru WRXs.

Nakamoto: "We didn't plan this season expecting to be in a position to win a championship. Coming to COG we knew we needed to take a win here and then win again at Lake Superior in October to pull it off."

As the two day event got started on Saturday it was immediately clear that the three Production GT championship leaders were going to have a battle. As the day progressed it seemed the main battle would be between Johnson and local Steamboater, Tanner Foust, who was largely tipped for the win. Eric Langbein and Jeremy Wimpey sat comfortably in third awaiting their opportunity to attack.

After trading the lead back and forth several times during the day our Carolina RS crew had a slight mishap on Special Stage 8 (SS8) while leading by a mere 3 seconds.
Johnson- "I heard Wendy say the note, it was a 'Left 5 minus don't cut' but I had already chosen my line through there. I'm still not sure what I hit but it surely rung our bell pretty hard."

Johnson had hugged the rock face a little too tightly and caught the left front wheel on a rock, the impact bent part of the suspension called the control arm and pushed the wheel back such that it was rubbing on the body work. Johnson claimed the damage shouldn't slow them down substantially but at the end of the day the damage was clear, they'd lost four seconds and thus the lead on SS8 and a further 6 seconds on SS9 to end Saturday's competition with a 7 second deficit.

Swift and complete repairs were made to the car by the North Coast Subaru team on Saturday night and the CarolinaRS WRX was ready for more on Sunday morning. The second day of the event held a remaining 35 stage miles of competition for the rally teams.

Johnson and Nakamoto came out on the attack first thing on Sunday morning and by the service break after 3 of the day's 6 special stages they were back in the lead by 5 seconds. As they pulled away from the service area they knew it was time to give whatever extra speed was left, if there was anything left.

After two more stages Foust had managed to turn the tables again and recaptured the lead by exactly 1.0 second going into the last 5 mile stage. After charging flat-out through the final stage they pulled up to the time clock to get their time of 5:29.6 and pulled ahead to compare with the awaiting Foust. In the end Foust with co-driver Scott Crouch had scored a 5:25.3 and had won the stage by 4.3 seconds and thus the Production GT fight was over with Johnson/Nakamoto in 2nd place by 5.3 seconds.

Nakamoto: "We've had a superb event competing at this level with Tanner and Scott, usually rallies are won and lost by minutes. This was the closest battle we've ever had and even from second place it feels great to have gone as quickly as we did all the way until the end. I can't wait until LSPR (Lake Superior) in October!"

Now the Production GT championship fight moves on to the last event of the season, the Lake Superior Rally, in late October where Johnson/Nakamoto must win to have a chance at the championship victory for the season.
Johnson- "Lake Superior has always been a great rally for me, I've won there both times I've been and it was the site of the first rally in the new Subaru. I'm looking forward to another good battle there with Tanner and I'm happy to finally be on some roads which are familiar."

Carolina RallySport would like to thank the following, please consider our sponsors below when you need to make a related purchase!

Elite Performance - ElitePro offers a large catalog of aftermarket performance parts for your car. Check them out the next time you're ready to upgrade or replace parts on your car.

FlamecrusherUSA - Flamecrusher is a race wear apparel manufacturer based in South Boston Virginia. They build comfortable, custom fitted, custom designed flame retardant driving suits for all types of racers.

Delta V Motorsports - Subaru and other high performance car tuning specialists located in Richmond, VA.

North Coast Subaru Rally Team- Offers many lines of rally parts from their website www.NCRally.com

The Rally America site has been updated, please visit the new site and look here for CarolinaRS driver Matthew Johnson listed in the "Top Teams" section.

Additional information for Colorado COG Rally may be seen here

NEXT EVENT-- Lake Superior Rally on October 21-22 in Houghton, Michigan. Go here for more information