Last Ditch Racing Blog

LDR got a couple new livestock at the farm this weekend! We received our new tire changer and wheel balancer from Greg Smith Equipment. After much research, we purchased these unit due to their quality/price combination.

The tire changer has dual assist arms, which should help us mount the difficult rally tires. A rally tire has such thick sidewalls, that mounting is difficult.

Why purchase these machines at all!? Well, it's a large investment in our infrastructure, but here's an example. For each event, we usually take 12 tires/wheels. This means that I get to load 12 mounted tires and loose tires in the truck and take them to the local tire shop. Then I unload them. Then, I return and load them all back in the truck for return to the shop. Finally, they get loaded into the rally truck and onto the trailer and car for the event.

Sooooo.....potentially 24 tires that I get to move 4 times. Not to mention the travel time. We've been thinking about this for some time, so it's an exciting upgrade for L'Equpipe!

In other news, T-4 is getting a new oil pan, fresh steering rack, an intercooler spray tank and some general TLC. Out Peltor intercom(which is on the fritz), has been sent out for service.

Out next event will be the Rallye Baie Des Chaleurs in Quebec June 27-28, 2008.

Cheers! John

Time for another Triple Caution Farm Update! :-) We don't stop moving for long here and the list of projects waiting in the wings is always long! :-)

Last weekend, we upgraded the trailer with a winch mount and some new tow rings. We found that we need to replace the axles on the trailer as the trip to Missouri a couple months ago destroyed one. We've put some miles on the trailer, so new axles will be a good upgrade.

We've been working on installing a Mercedes diesel engine in a 1960's Land Rover Series IIA truck and the engine is now in. Unfortunately, we need to replace head gaskets on two Range Rover P38 models, and it needs to get done soon!

T-4, the rally car, needs to get in soon for a rotated turbo system and possibly addition of a rotated intake manifold and front mount intercooler.

And what about the Ford Merkur?! We have parts, and a freshly rebuilt engine. We need to find time to work on the roll cage and other bits. It should put a big smile on our face when we're done! :-)

Cheers! John

A big congrats to Mark Fleming for his recent win at the Adobe Photoshop World 2008. conference. He won the Best in Show Prize/Guru Award for his photo of T-4 airborne at the 2006 New England Forest Rally. He also won in the photography category for a separate photo.

Photoshop World Winners

To see more of Mark's fantastic work, check out his blog site at:
Mark Fleming

Congrats Mark, and thanks for making us look soooo sexy! :-)

Cheers! John

Progress continues here at Triple Caution Farm, with T-4 being nearly ready to go onto the lift for a round of repairs and upgrades. We have to replace the front bumper cover and the oil pan due to damage from our recent events. She'll get a thorough battle damage assessment and we'll tend to other issues as they arise.

We're contemplating installing the Triple Caution Thong front mount intercooler that was on T-2, and installer our new 12L STi intecooler spray tank. Rotated turbo? Rotated intake manifold?! Perhaps! :-)

We just made a major investment in our shop infrastructure with the purchase of a tire machine and wheel balancer. With the number of rally tires and street tires we process in a year, it'll pay for itself in no time!

Just realizing how little time we have prior to Rallye Baie Des Chaleurs in June!

Cheers! John

All our videos are now online. We're going to find a couple of older ones and try and get those up. I think we have a few from Targa Newfoundland and Rallye Quebec. Good stuff!

Spring has arrived here at Triple Caution Farm, world headquarters of the Last Ditch Racing team. :-) As the snow melts, piles of parts and tires emerge as if growing out of the ground.

The rally car will be getting some new parts and we'll be working on upgrading some systems prior to our next event, the Rallye Baie Des Chaleurs in Quebec in June. www.rallyebdc.com. If you want to spectate at a fantastic event, this is one of the best! It's one of the closest rallies to our home base and one of our favorites.

We had a difficult event there last year, with boost cut issues and the shift lever repeatedly popping out. The final blow was a broken outer tierod after hitting a skidder tire on the Super Special. Quel dommage! ;-)

We always have a line of various automotive projects here at the farm. My old Land Rover will eventually get a Mercedes diesel engine. My new(er) Range Rover will also get a new engine. We have our Merkur rally car project that's always on the list, and of course our street cars and the rally car! We need a couple more bays.

We'll be working on a spring video podcast soon, so look for that.

Thanks for visiting the site and checking in with us! Cheers! John

Going through some teething pains at present trying to load content into/onto the site.

Look for our full complement of videos and podcasts soon.

You can find us on myspace, facebook and a beginning collection of photos of flikr.com

With the summer rally season a few months away, we are beginning to turn our thoughts to making some improvements to T-4 to make her more competitive.

Cheers! John

Updating the new site slowly but surely. Working hard to get media loaded. 9 years is a long time to accumulate stuff! If anyone sees a photo on our site that they took, and it's NOT credited to them(or if you have a problem with the photo being here), simply e-mail me and I'll take care of it!

Cheers! John

For Immediate Release

Bangor, Maine USA

Maine's oldest rally team travelled to Salem, Missouri for the 100 Acre Wood rally, round 2 of the Rally America National Championship. The event consisted of two regional events; Trespasser's Wil Central Region Rally on Friday and the 100 Acre Wood Central Regional Rally on Saturday. The event was also the host of the Rally America Regional Rally Championship for 2007.

While the event is known for it's fast and flowing gravel roads, it is rarely a dry event. This year was no exception as the Last Ditch Racing team seemed to tow the snow and ice South with them from Maine. The week's forecast called for, "ice pellets," which the team sound found were accurately described. Said driver John Cassidy, "We thought they meant sleet or freezing rain, but they were tiny round balls of ice. Talk about slippery!" The team had come prepared with snow, ice and cold weather gravel tires. "We've been doing this long enough to know that we could be racing in any weather and on any surface!," said Cassidy.

Having won Rally America's Eastern Regional Championship in the Open Class in 2007, the team were anxious to take the show on the road to compete against other Open Class champions from other regions in the US. Their main competitors for the event would be Henry and Cindy Krolikowski from Michigan in their Subaru.

Fridays' four stages saw teams trying to come to grip with, well...the lack of grip. Cassidy and Getchell chose to go out on Yokohama AO-34's rally snow tires. The tires were a good choice for the conditions and helped LDR to a second place overall(in a field of 24) in the Trespassers Wil Central Regional Rally, 33 seconds adrift of the top spot on the podium. The team ended the day about 2:30 minutes ahead of the Krolikowski's.

Feeling that the cold weather would most likely cause the existing ice to freeze solid, the team chose to use their Michelin X-Ice tires for the first 4 stages on Saturday. A decision, they came to realize, on the transit out to the morning's stages, was a poor one. "Dave and I knew going to the stages that we had made the wrong tire choice. My confidence in the tires was low and we were sliding in the slush with very little traction. The X-Ice's excel on ice in cold temperatures, but we really needed the Yokohama's on," said Cassidy.

Stage 5, the first stage of Saturday, proved to be the team's undoing. On a left hand turn early in the stage, they struck a rock that was in the racing line. The left front tire was soon going flat. With about 7 miles left in the stage, the crew decided they'd loose less time by simply driving the rest of the stage on the flat. The team dropped about 2 minutes on the stage, finishing well down the order. Stopping on the transit to change the flat, they found the jack not working! Borrowing an operational jack, they got the spare mounted, but were now late on the transit. With a non-functioning speedometer/odometer due to an electrical glitch, they drew a speeding penalty, being clocked 25mph in a 15mph zone. "To say it wasn't our morning was an understatment," said Cassidy. "We handily turned a 2:30 advantage into a similar deficit within the span of 4 stages."

Not a team to go gently down the order, they managed through the remaining 3 stages of the morning without another flat. The service crew refitted the Yokohama tires and away the team went, eager to prove a point. Said Cassidy, "I knew that our deficit was more than likely too large to make up, but that didn't mean we wouldn't try! We have a reputation for going faster as events progress, and Dave and I were a bit cranky at our situation and wanted to prove a point."

Prove a point they did. Cassidy and Getchell won 5 of the remaining 6 stages outright among the 21 regional competitors. Their pace garnered three top 10 overall stage times among both the national and regional competitors. The team finished the 100 Acre Wood Central Regional Rally in seventh place overall, with the Krolikowski's taking the win.

In the 2007 Regional Rally Championship portion of the event, Last Ditch Racing took 3rd overall. The Krolikowski's took first and fellow Mainer Chris Duplessis took 2nd. Without the road penalties, the LDR crew would have taken the win in the Regional Rally Championship, having won an impressive 9/14 stages outright among the 2007 Regional Rally Championship contenders. "Dave and I did our best and put in some of our best stages to date and we were very pleased that we were able to go quickly in such challenging conditions. We're hoping to find more speed as the 2008 season progresses," said Cassidy.

Last Ditch Racing would like to thank their 2008 Team Partners: Triple Caution, LLC
Team O'Neil Rally School
Hydra EMS
MOTUL lubricants

Last Ditch Racing would like to thank crew members Drew Simpson and Eric Wages for their help at the event.

For more information Last Ditch Racing, please visit: http://www.lastditchracing.com
To purchase Last Ditch Racing Merchandise, please visit: http://www.cafepress.com/lastditchracing
For more information on the 100 Acre Wood, please visit: http://www.100aw.org
For scoring information on the 100 Acre Wood and regional rallies, please visit: http://www.rallyracingnews.com/

After a mega drive(15 hours from here to there), the LDR crew has emerged with a record setting result.

Having finished the 2002 RIQ in dead last place in our Honda CRX rally car, I wanted to see what it would be like to tackle the event in our updated 2.5L Subaru Impreza all wheel drive car.

Having put in a fair performance at the 2002 Maine Forest Winter Club Rally in early December, and then having some winter instruction at Team O’Neil in New Hampshire, we felt we were ready.

We attended Team O’Neil as a team(driver/co-driver) as we had asked Tim for instruction so would could better make pace notes. Tim obliged and asked Marc Goldfarb, an accomplished and experienced co-driver, to instruct us as well.

We wanted some more experience on how to perform recce and make our notes as RIQ 2003 would be our first opportunity to do so. The driving experience for me in the snow was humiliating and humbling, but that was good. The pace noting experience was invaluable.

There was one day of recce, and we were advised that teams could run each stage twice. We were up earlier than needed after a good night’s rest. Some of the stages were nearly closed due to recent snow and many recce vehicles got stuck. We performed recce in co-driver Dave Getchell’s Subaru Impreza RS, affectionately named, “Nigel.”

We completed the day and felt good about out notes. We felt they were consistent across all stages, and we had both come to a common language to use when describing the stage to each other.

Last Ditch Racing had made the decision to focus on running as many SCCA ProRally events as possible in 2003, and I had thrown out the idea of going to California to run the Rim of the World 2003 rally in early May.

I really didn’t expect the team to bite, but when they ALL told me they were up for going, I really couldn’t believe it! We’ve always had high expectations of our rally program, but this would be one of our most ambitious undertakings to date. Targa Newfoundland 2002 was our other.

The team members had combinations of stashed frequent flyer miles and free tickets from getting bumped from previous flights that allowed them to find their way to California much quicker than I. I would piloting the team’s new tow rig, “LDR-1 Heavy,” a 1997 Ford F-250 crew cab diesel that I had recently bought from a wholesale lot.

While the team had their reservations made, I was desperately searching for a co-driver to make the cross country trek with me. Despite numerous responses, I finally found a co-driver in one Mike Rademacher, a private jet pilot and fellow Subaru owner from Maine.

Our rally car, “Steel Tulip,” had most recently completed Rallye De Quebec, and was in fine shape. We loaded all the gear we thought we’d ever need and I picked up the trip-tik from the AAA office. We estimated a trip that would take 5 days averaging 700 miles daily.

After struggling with Steel Tulip, our 1994 Subaru Impreza with 1999 Subaru 2.5RS engine and LINK PLUS ECU for two events, we were at our wits end! We finally contacted LINK in New Zealand and Brett Middletion at MRT Performance in Australia for help.

Paul at MRT was able to diagnose some significant tuning errors we had made in our LINK and we realized that we had been lucky not to have melted our engine down as we were running dangerously lean and using only a quarter of the resolution of the LINK’s fuel table! Truly a testament to the longevity of the Subaru powerplant!

Some back and forth via the internet in the middle of the night(on our end-it was mid day in Australia), and we had a map that made the car feel like we had a new engine installed! It put large smiles on all our faces! To have the car finally run correctly, and understand the LINK PLUS was doubly exciting.

Bangor driver to compete in Pro Rally race in Rumford
By Tom Hale

If racing full throttle through the forest is your type of motorsport, you’ll have a chance to see it when the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Pro Rally comes to Rumford Friday and Saturday.

Pro Rally often conjures up visions of racers from Europe or other foreign shores. Race fans may be pleased to know that Bangor’s John Cassidy with his race team, Last Ditch Racing, will be in the top class.

After a couple years racing at the local Club Rally level and the Canadian rally scene, Cassidy’s team has gone professional this season. Cassidy and co-driver Dave Getchell from Camden are the only team from Maine to compete in three Pro events in 2003.

Cassidy has taken delivery of a turbocharged 1998 TAD Motorsports Subaru Impreza to race in rally racing’s top class, Open. In previous races Last Ditch Racing competed in their non-turbocharged 1994 Subaru Impreza.

The Maine team finished its last race in Pennsylvania ninth in the Open class.

Cassidy, a physician’s assistant, developed his interest in rallying after viewing a race on ESPN. His mechanical background at that time was limited to restoration work on Land Rovers.

Bangor ProRally team driven
Last Ditch Racing competitive in recent events
By Tom Hale in The Bangor Daily News

The Last Ditch Racing ProRally racing team of Bangor finished its quest to race on both ends of the continent by placing 26th in the Susquehannock Trail SCCA ProRally held over the weekend in Wellsboro, Pa. The previous weekend the Maine team finished 15th (fifth overall in the Open Class) in the Rocky Mountain Rally in Calgary, Alberta.

Team driver John Cassidy said the engine in the team's Subaru race car blew in stage five of the Pennsylvania rally.

"I was not disappointed in our race weekend since we placed eighth in the Sherwood Forest Club Rally portion of the event, thus earning our highest placing in a rally event in the United States," Cassidy said. "Our Bangor team was the highest placing nonturbo car in the Club Rally."

Despite a broken spring in the car's suspension, the rally team moved up four places after the first stage, three more in the third stage, and held its own in the fourth stage of the Pro Rally.

The road to Maine Forest 2002 was paved with adversity. This event is very important for myself and the team. We consider it our home event and this year was our fourth time at the race. I started rallying after seeing fellow Mainer Carl Merril on ESPN2 and couldn't believe that someone in my state was rallying! As crazy as the thought was at the time, I bought a car and decided to go rallying. My passion for rally has steadily increased. I regret that I never got to meet Carl prior to his untimely death. From what I understand, he was quite a character. I would expect nothing less from a fellow Mainer in a rally car!

We had many obstacles to getting to this year's event. We weren't done building our new rally car, a 1994 1.8L Subaru Impreza AWD sedan. We didn't have our SCCA ProRally licenses. We had just come off a Canadian events two weeks prior.

The Last Ditch Team was up to the challenge. Team is the operative word. For the first time in it's short history, Last Ditch Racing is a TEAM, consisting of, John Cassidy, Maygen McCarty, Eric Wages, Margaret Michaels, Dave Getchell and Matt Robinson. Without the team, there would be no car, no event, no stories. A heartfelt thanks to all of them for helping me realize my dream of becoming a better rally driver and representing Maine in the sport.

I’ll premise this article to note that it is being penned quite some time after the fact, so I’ll apologize now for any glaring omissions.

The RIC rally is an epic, three day event, very similar in structure to events held in the World Rally Championship. I had heard of the rally, but had never attended. It seemed as if it would be a good yardstick for the team. Little did I know....

Prior to the event, we had to replace the transmission in the car. We took the opportunity to also put in a new 1.8L engine as well. The rear diff was also replaced. We didn’t know at the time that we had replaced the diff with a conflicting ratio to that in the gearbox!

I convinced the crew that we should tackle the event, and we headed North. We took one set of gravel tires, and after much arm twisting by Eric, I agreed to pack a set of Nokia snow tires.

Not one to make rational decisions, I made the workload for the team exponentially greater in the few weeks we had to prepare for Maine Forest Winter 2002. Having returned from Charlevoix, our first DNF from the year, we had been discussing moving into Open Class for 2003. We had a 2.5RS Impreza engine sitting in the garage and we had been tempted to swap it in earlier in the season, but had thought better of it.

Dave Getchell, a long time team member and co-driver for another team, would be joining me in the right seat for this race. Dave ended his first race in the woods after a spectacular roll at Ski Sawmill 2002. I told Dave I thought I could get him across the finish line. The thought of having another co-driver in the stable for the team was a very sensible one, as we have had five different co-drivers this year alone!

Defi-St. Agathe was a shot in the dark for the Last Ditch Racing crew. Having just had a successful debut at Maine Forest 2002 with the team's new 1994 1.8L Subaru Impreza, it was decided that Defi should be the first CARS event for the car.

The car performed flawlessly at the nortiorously rough Maine Forest event and needed no mechanical attention prior to Defi. The engine had a bottom end knock, but we were assured by the folks at Exeter Subaru that it would, "probably," hold together for another race.

We headed North and hit rush hour in Montreal, adding at least two hours to our trip. We were pleased to see two other Subarus with the same displacement in the P-3 class. Racing the Impreza at Maine Forest in the SCCA PGT class against stock 2002 WRX'S was futile to say the least!

The first night saw us do two stages at a tarmac road racing course. We soon found that the 1.8L did not have the gumption to power-slide the car through the tight turns. We took a more traditional road racing approach of , "slow in, fast out," the second lap and were rewarded with a faster time. A timing error on the first lap led to us taking a bogey time for the first stage, putting us down a couple minutes on most of the other teams heading into day two.

Day two provided us with beautiful weather, although conditions got dusty to the point of being dangerous toward the end of the day. We steadily gained time on our nearest Impreza competitor, but at the end of the day it was not enough to advance a place in the standings.

We were extremely pleased to take third place in P-3, and took home a trophy for the top finishing American team as well as a gratis entry into the inagural Targa Newfoundland 2002 tarmac rally!

I knew we had to install a thermostat in the car, but didn't get around to it prior to heading up to Quebec. We then end up doing it in the hotel parking lot, risking our ears, fingers and respective noses to exposure in the gale force wind, sideway snow and then finally stinging sleet. BTW, the car never leaked a drop of coolant the whole race and we were quite toasty inside! :-)

The stuff at the end of SS1 was on a downhill section. I was too fast and started sliding. No way to stop-brakes no good-accelerator no good. Up and onto the snowbank. Out come Nate and I and the shovels and traction mats. We huffed and puffed and were finally rescued by a caring Mazda 323 driver who tugged us out. Come to find out we were just around the corner from the finish! Talk about heartbreak! :-(

SS2 bit. We race into the stage only to stop behind a line of 6-8 cars sitting on the hot stage. Turns out the Datsun 510 couldn't make it up the ice precipice. No surprise. Then, a service van gets stuck. Then, the tow vehicles can't tow us up! We end up getting towed all the way from the bottom to the top on the back of a Ford pickup, with both vechicles clawing for traction. Studs would be nice.

Did you ever want to rally, but didn’t have a rally car in the garage? This was my problem prior to the Baie Des Chaleurs rallye in Quebec this year-sort of. See, I sold Fireball and was holding him until his new owner could pick him up. The mailing came for the Baie rallye and we really wanted to go-problem was, Fireball was no longer mine! So, I e-mailed his new owner and offered to rent Fireball for the event. He replied that it was cool to take Fireball North for a romp and we were on!

Rallying in Canada, specifically the province of Quebec, is very attractive to us as we are less than ten hours away from most of the five events that make up the Coupe De Quebec. The exchange rate is very favorable, with fuel being the only expensive consumable. But most of all, the Canadian rally community is extremely friendly and inviting! The events that we have attended are the best organized we’ve entered to date.

Enough gushing about the Great White North. We were on a mission-this was Fireball’s last spin with Maygen and myself in the seats and we wanted to show well. We entered the National event so that we could get some more seat time and experience with a longer format rallye. We had everything packed and somehow tricked Dave Getchell, Matt Robinson, Eric Wages and Margaret Michaels into coming along for the craziness that is a rally weekend.

Text of article:

RACERS: The Sports Car Club of America Maine Forest RAlly Pro-Rally drew nearly 100 cars from all over the country, Canada, and a few foreign countries Friday afternoon, as well as hundreds of sports car enthusiasts. The two-day race began Friday afternoon through about 100 miles of rough terrain in the Western Mountains area. It ends late Saturday afternoon. Top: Hundreds of people took the opportunity to look closely at some of the SCCA competition vehicles early Friday afternoon in downtown Rumford just before the race began. Above Left: John Cassidy, the driver, will be competing for the fourth time in the Maine Forest Rally, while navigator Maygen McCarty is making her second effort. The couple are from Bangor and are driving a 1994 Subaru Impreza. "I love everything about the race," said McCarty. "It's the excitement." Above right: Navigator Conrad Ketelsen and driver Bob Olson, both from Minnesota, are making a first-time run in the Maine Forest Rally leg of the SCCA. It's a first visit to the state for the two as well. "It's a beautiful state," said Olson who is driving a 1993 Porsche 911. Right: Chris Havas, the driver from Vermont, and navigator David Kean, originally from England, are making Havas' fifth try at the competition in the Rumford area. Havas particularly likes the rough terrain, and roller coaster-styled roads in the Parmanchenee Lake area. He's driving a 2000 Volkswagen Golf.

Article by Steve Carrick, Co-Driver for Last Ditch Racing's Targa Effort!

Stories on the event by Jim Kenzie (http://jimkenzie.tripod.com/)

Article by Jim Kenzie mentioning us specifically (http://jimkenzie.tripod.com/TNPrologue.htm)

www.targanewfoundland.com (including official results)

Targa...Targa Newfoundland...

Those were the words that I wouldn't let enter into my conscience willingly prior to heading North to the Rallye Defi-St. Agathe. I had viewed the Targa site earlier in the year and was interested, but knew that I would not be able to enter my lowly Subaru Impreza rally car in the race because it was not, "historically significant." Although, the more I thought about it, the Subaru Impreza is very significant in the history of rallying. No matter...I wasn't going to Targa anyway.

Prior to leaving for Defi, I received an e-mail from the Defi rally organizers explaining that the winners of each class would win a free entry into Targa Newfoundland. Dave Getchell, one of my team members, joked prior to leaving, "we're going to win an entry to Targa!"

What follows is a long synopsis of our weekend. It became a little long winded, so read at your own peril! ;-)

There were rally cars everywhere! Parc Expose was really fun with lots of public coming up and asking about the car and what we had done to it. Rallysport was there with a mobile trailer making up cool t-shirts, and Subaru Canada and USA were selling shirts and giving away posters and stickers. My boys got Maine Forest shirts with other pictures on the front. One got a jet and the other a Nissan Primera. Go figure! Turns out they had a CRX graphic and we had them put that on our other shirts.

The spectator stage on Friday afternoon was fun, with lots of folks able to see the cars up close and personal. With so many cars in the field, the waits to run were long but that provided us all some time to meet new folks and catch up with old acquaintances. Friday night was rough for us at the back of the pack, but we knew it would be. We drove conservatively to finish. SS4 was scrubbed after an Audi caught fire and burnt to the ground(so we heard).

Our car was mechanically okay after Friday and we got to sleep about 12AM! A record for us. We even slept in a bit! :-)

The following is an abridged e-mail sent to a fellow racer regarding our experiences at Maine Forest 2000. After trying to edit it, I decided that the flow of ideas/impressions stands up pretty well as is.....

Click here for links to pictures of us from Maine Forest 2000!

Stage 1, over two hours to wait in line to start...nerve racking to say the least! Stage not bad but we were slowed by someone without their OK sign out. They were standing on the side of the road with it in their hand, but not displayed. We were almost caught by the car behind us...

Well, the Last Ditch Racing team had a long week! :-) We travelled to New Hampshire Wednesday night to attend the Team O'Neil liscensing school. We took a wrong turn in New Hampshire and took an hour-and-a-half detour through the State Forest. Beautiful country, but we were ready for dinner and bed!

The school was fantastic! A big thanks to all the instructors for presenting the material in a way we could understand. The mock stage was great as it gave us a good idea of the timing setup.

We arrived in Rumford Thursday night and found our Motel. We then went to the Madison to check in...it was a mob scene! Different accents, the cars, and the excitement of registering for our first rally...it was sensory overload. We found John Buffum and the Michelin's he had overnight expressed from the warehouse for us. We watched the team work on Carl Smith's Ford Escort behind the van and were in awe of the level of preparation.