,
For the next two stages I vowed to focus not on going fast, but on not screwing up any more. Going slow, for me, is usually faster than going fast anyway. Ponder that for a while.
Our slow, careful pace turned out to be reasonably fast. Finally, if we were careful to choose only the mistake-free downhill stages and compare selectively against less experienced drivers in slightly damaged cars, we could once again claim that the 510 was capable of beating open-class WRXs.
Our new, conservative strategy garnered actual boos from the crowd at the Super Special Stage, but with no trailer and a profound desire not to ride shotgun in the tow truck, we decided to stick with going slow to go fast through the last two stages.
Our “slow” performance was good enough that, at the start of the second-to-last stage, we were negotiating our start position with a WRX team whose times were nearly identical to ours when the curse suddenly returned. Our strategy of never turning off the car had been working brilliantly until now, but just as I was squeezing past the WRX, three numbers lept into the corner of my vision. For most of the day those numbers had been 1, 7, 7. Suddenly, and for no reason other than to ruin our day, they had changed to 2, 2, and 4. Before I could process the full implication of the numbers, the last one changed to 5. And then to 6.
The engine was overheating, and fast! After 9 hours of continuous operation, the cooling fan had popped a fuse. In a move of either profound confidence or fatigued inattention, I had packed exactly 0 spare fuses in the car. As the numbers slowly ticked upward, I pulled fuses from the interior fan circuit, then the high beam circuit, then the rally light circuit, jamming each into the cooling fan slot only to watch them pop seconds later.
With ten minutes of idling before we’d be allowed to move, our situation suddenly crystallized. We were in the midst of the least spectacular DNF in rally history. Reluctantly, I turned the key, and lost the race.
Read about Kojima’s feeble attempt to follow us with a camera: |
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