The rally tradition lives on in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as last year there were concerns over the fate of the Lake Superior Performance Rally, the infamous “Oldest, toughest, meanest” rally in the U.S. At the close of Rally-America’s season last year it was announced that three events would be cut from the 2010 Rally-America national schedule (Ojibwe Forests Rally in Minnesota, Rally Colorado and the Lake Superior Performance Rally) partially as a cost-cutting measure, but also as a way to have the series end prior to the X Games where many of the four-wheel drive Subaru WRXs, Mitsubishi Evos and Ford Fiestas compete. In years past, as many teams decided to run the first half of the season in an attempt to qualify for X Games in July, typically the numbers were reduced once August rolled around.
Ojibwe Forests Rally was run, but as a small two-day event using the same three stages in both directions all done in the late afternoon or evening. The Rally Colorado group threw in the towel as they chose not to attempt to run their event as a regional. The Lake Superior rally organizers made the decision to continue on with the tradition, but were concerned about whether this might have an impact on spectators and general business to the city of Houghton.
Enter Eric Burmeister, the head of the MaxAttack! Championship for two-wheel drive rally cars. Eric has been a long-time friend of the U.S. rally scene who loves rallying in the U.P. and used to crew for his dad (when the rally was known as the Press On Regardless) before becoming a driver himself back in 1996. Eric DID NOT want to see the fate of a historic rally fall by the wayside and get relegated to regional status, so he chose to have it as the final event of three for the MaxAttack! Championship. With the help from sponsorship from Danza del Sol Winery in Temecula Valley, California, the series had $15,000 to be divided amongst the top drivers in the U.S. for this round. The first two events were held in Oregon and Maine with the final round, and Championship, happening at LSPR in conjunction with the regular regional event. This helped boost the field to over 40 cars for an event that otherwise may have had only half that number of entries. The Ojibwe Forests Rally, which normally boasted large fields when it was a regular Rally-America national event, only had 21 starters this year.
A number of stages that are normally run on day two of the event were cancelled weeks before the event due to landowner issues over a non-rally related lawsuit. This put a damper on running some of the usual stages like Burma and Gratiot Lake and the reasoning to still run Delaware Mine and Brockway Mountain just wasn’t there. Therefore the rally was scaled back to a one day, ten stage event. In most cases, this didn’t deter the number of entries. (Hey, after all this is LSPR, right?)
The master of the Lake Superior Performance Rally is Doug Shepherd who had lead the event overall on a regular basis in the 90’s always to be thwarted with troubles late in the second day on three occasions. He had never won the event after some fierce driving. Doug was back and running in his very fast Dodge SRT-4. Last year, as you may recall, Lauchlin O’Sullivan borrowed Doug’s car to win the MaxAttack! Championship when the final round was run at Ojibwe. This year Lauchlin rented the 2007 Group 5 Championship winning Dodge SRT-4 of Cary Kendall to drive. Eric Burmeister himself entered his Mazda Speed 3 and was there to lurk if the first two made mistakes. The nice thing about LSPR is it’s not a horsepower race as there are twisty sections which can keep the usually slower Group 2 cars at an even pace. Canada’s Jan Zedril runs rapid in his Misubishi Lancer ES, as does Chris Greenhouse (Dodge Neon), Cody Crane (Honda CRX), Brian Gottleib (Toyota FX-16) and Silas Himes (Honda Civic).
Stages one and two were run on the outer edge of Houghton in the Moyle gravel pit. After those stages only eight seconds separated the SRT-4s of O’Sullivan and Shepherd with Burmeister only another second back. Greenhouse, Crane, Zedril and Himes were all seconds apart in that order. Jim Scray and his ageless Datsun 510 put together two clean runs to end up eighth with Colin McCleery (Merkur XR4Ti) and Brian Gottleib (Toyota FX-16) right behind. A sadly notable DNF was the Chevy S10 of Jim Cox who snapped the left-front suspension just a mile into stage one. After those two stages, less than a half minute separated the top ten before they headed out to the forest sections!
On stage three, the fast but rough Herman stage, Silas Himes caught a little too much air and the car started to rotate before the landing. When it came down the left front suspension got bent and dug into the soft mud at the edge of the road causing the car to spin backwards. Himes’ run for a top ten finish was pretty much almost all but over as the car limped through the next stage and a half before the next service.
After four stages, the cars were reseeded at L’Anse service. Shepherd now had grabbed the lead from O’Sullivan who was now evenly tied for second with Greenhouse. Zedril continued to pick off his competitors and had just made his way past Crane and Burmeister on stage four. Matt Bushore showed his dominance by making up many positions on the forest roads and was now in seventh in his VW Jetta. Scray and McCleery held onto their positions with the freshly-built BMW 325i of Scott Sanford now up to tenth.
Sadly, Sanford’s rapid rise up the leader board ended with a fast off on the next stage. The car was allowed to continue, but was scored as a DNF for the remainder of the event. Also, on that same stage Cody Crane’s CRX was out with a blown tranny and the Ford Escort of Paul Donlin had major electrical issues after fording a huge water-puddle near the stage’s end. On stage six, Greenhouse lost two positions moving Zedril into third and Burmeister into fourth.
After seven stages, the order was now Shepherd, O’Sullivan (fifty-two seconds back), Zedril, Burmeister and Greenhouse for the top five. Bushore was now up to sixth with Scray in seventh and McCleery in eighth. Mike Merbach was now in ninth in his VW Jetta with the VW Beetle of John Huebbe in tenth. Next up was the Bob Lake stage which hadn’t been run in a few years but is a favorite of many of the regulars who had run here in years past.
Near the midpoint of the stage, while still leading, Shepherd had a big off that smashed the left rear corner of the car. Shepherd lost about a half-minute extracting himself, but still managed to lose just one second to O’Sullivan on that particular stage.
In the end Shepherd won the race with O’Sullivan taking second. However, O’Sullivan won the MaxAttack! Championship based on overall points combined from all three events. Zedril, Burmeister and Greenhouse held onto their positions for the top five. Bushore, Scray and Merbach all maintained their positions as well. Moving up two positions on the final stage was Silas Himes whose broad slide amused the hordes of fans at the last spectator location. Colin McCleery had important duties to attend to back home and had to miss the final two stages, however a rarely-used rule was used and Mike Hurst was able to fill in the spot so the team could finish.
The final point standings for the series had O’Sullivan at the top with 57 points. Eric Burmeister, who took second with 46 points, did a gentlemanly thing by donating his winnings back to the series to see the MaxAttack! Series grow for 2011 and beyond. Though Shepherd had only competed in one MA! event all year he still had enough points (35 points) for third. Brian Gottleib, who struggled with his new car in the late going at LSPR was fourth (32 points) and Jan Zedril (30 points) took fifth.
At the time of this writing in mid-November, the 2011 MaxAttack! Series schedule had not been set, however it’s looking somewhat positive that next year’s final event will hopefully be LSPR with discussions on the other events still up in the air.
LSPR was also a regionally run Rally-America event and the overall event winner was Roman Pakos in his Subaru WRX with Shepherd taking second with O’Sullivan in third. It was also the Regional Rally Championship Runoffs. That portion of the event was won by Jan Zedril in his Mistubishi Lancer, with David Allen’s Subaru WRX taking third and Matt Bushore’s VW Jetta taking third.
The status of next year’s LSPR is still in the air as it is not on the 2011 National schedule again for Rally-America. Organizers are debating whether to continue at this point as several have decided to throw in the towel. Others have been coming forward at this point to volunteer to keep the event alive, however next year’s rally is still eleven months away. Some interest has been noted at looking into a different sanctioning body for 2011. Otherwise with the declining number of old stages that can be run, due to the non-rally related lawsuit mentioned earlier, will new sections be used by the new organizers or is it just time to let the rally go by the wayside.
Hopefully, things will stay on the positive side to keep America’s “oldest, toughest, meanest” rally going on and on. The late Jon Davis, a former competitor, sponsor and organizer who passed away this past January, would definitely want it that way.
O/A Driver / CoDriver Car Time
1 Doug Shepherd / Karen Wagner 2003 Dodge SRT 4 1:25:43.2
2 Lauchlin O'Sullivan / Scott Putnam 2004 Dodge SRT 4 1:26:40.2
3 Jan Zedril / Jody Zedril 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer ES 4B11 1:27:58.4
4 Eric Burmeister / Dave Shindle 2007 Mazda MAZDASPEED3 1:29:13.9
5 Chris Greenhouse / Brian Johnson 1995 Plymouth Neon 1:29:40.3
6 Matt Bushore / Andrew Bushore 1985 Volkswagen Jetta 1:31:00.7
7 Jim Scray / Colin Vickman 1972 Datsun 510 1:33:32.6
8 Michael Merbach / Benjamin Slocum 1996 Volkswagen Jetta 1:35:32.5
9 Silas Himes / Matt Himes 1992 Honda Civic 1:36:40.2
10 Colin McCleery / Jimmy Brandt 1985 Sierra Pikes Peak Special 1:36:58.8
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