Why so many people came to DirtFish for their OTR test

A post-Olympus, pre-Oregon test day was a huge success at DirtFish this week – and the first of many

BDF_1075 4

In the end, it was ARA National Championship round 3.5. Or that’s what it felt like.

Hosting a pre-Oregon Trail Rally test at DirtFish Rally School made sense with America’s rallying eye, as usual for this time of the season, focused firmly on the west coast. With Olympus Rally done, there was no shortage of crews keen to bridge the five-week gap with more seat time on the dirt ahead of round four, which kicks off in Portland on Friday afternoon.

“The world knows about our capabilities as a rally school,” said DirtFish head of brand Brenten Kelly. “And, of course, we’ve run huge competitions here before, with two rounds of Global Rallycross on the property in our early years and lots of other events – including Northwest Rally Association’s Rallycross Fest with more than 200 cars competing.

“But as a test facility, we’re really second to none. It’s not just the roads, but the infrastructure, the shop, the expertise, the proximity to Seattle’s international airport and hotels with preferred rates just minutes away.

“There’s a reason Ford came here to roll out its Mach-E Rally last year.

“With our course technicians, we can set the roads up to, pretty much, whatever the crews and clients want, we have a fantastic shop here and just about everything you would want to shake a car down or set one up ahead of a rally.

“We’d talked for a while about running a test day between Olympus and OTR and in the end the talking stopped, we called a few people and got on with it. We didn’t want to push too hard, just kind of testing the water with this one.”

The day was run by DirtFish’s chief instructor Nate Tennis, with ARA frontrunner Roberto Yglesias joining for a private test later in the week.

Michael Honn

DirtFish instructor Michael Honn put his recently rebuilt Subaru through its pre-Oregon paces

“Testing went really well,” said Tennis. “We had a bunch of teams coming out, getting seat time, setting up their cars and just getting prepared before heading down to Portland. Having seen the demand for this, we’re certainly going to be doing more of the same.

“The kind of relaxed environment we had here on the day – and we always have here in school – is not especially common when you’re in the middle of a rally. I know a lot of the drivers, both locals and from the top-level teams, really enjoyed the opportunity to drive the same stretch of road, to try different set-ups and approaches and to generally shake the rust off before the weekend.

“DirtFish employees being here to offer car set-up feedback and advice as well as instructors who were helping find more pace behind the wheel was another big plus.

“Having Roberto along in his Audi the following day also demonstrated how we can tailor the property even further to an individual’s needs. It was really useful for Roberto to have his engineer as well as his co-driver with him in the car for some of the running time. We’re all about delivering on the client’s specific needs as they prepare for an event.”

Brenten Kelly
There’s a reason Ford came here to roll out its Mach-E Rally last year. Brenten Kelly

Reigning L2WD National Champion Richo Healey was a big fan of round 3.5. Stepping his Lexus up to the open class for this season, the California-based Australian was keen to spend as much time in the car as possible.

“It’s awesome to get a chance to drive between events,” said Healey, “especially in a less consequential environment. With less miles than we hoped at Olympus I jumped on the chance to catch up a bit, so feeling out the car before OTR has put us in a much better spot.

“The course we ran was great, a lot of variety and opportunity to experiment with technique and setup. We’ll still do event shakedown, but the opportunity to put substantial miles on the car was far too good to pass up.”

Richo Healey

Reigning L2WD champion Richo Healey was revelling in the opportunity to get more seat time ahead of this week's OTR

Comments