NEWRY – A good night turned into a rough morning for the Day One leaders at the Maine Forest Rally Saturday.
For the team of Alfredo “Dedo” DeDominicis and Massimo Daddoveri a great afternoon turned into a somber evening.
All three teams atop the leaderboard fell on hard luck early in the second day of the two-day event. Only one of them finished the rally, while Dedo and his co-driver found out more than an hour after they had celebrated victory that a 24-second penalty was slapped against them for being late to Parc Expose for Stage 5. The penalty knocked the team from first to fifth and gave Ramana Lagemann and Michael Fennell the victory in the fifth round of the Rally America National Championship tour. The duo finished with a time of 1:06:08.7.
Lagemann took the race on short notice. He received a call last week asking if he’d drive and he accepted.
“We knew we had a strong car,” he said. “We went quick enough to stay with the top guys. Our car is well-suited for the rough stuff.”
Travis Pastrana and Christian Edstrom were seven seconds behind the winners to finish second with Matthew Iorio and Ole Holter placing third.
Not only a win on the tour was at stake Saturday, but also the final two spots for X Games 12 in Los Angeles on August 5. The top two finishers that hadn’t already qualified were accepted. That meant the Lagemann-Fennell team with join Andrew Comrie-Picard and Marc Goldfarb in heading out west. The pair finished in fourth to nip Dedo and Daddoveri by just 3.7 seconds.
The trip from Berlin, N.H., to Newry turned out to be a horrible one for the two Hyundai cars. Antoine L’Estage and Mark Williams had a comfortable 24-second lead after the first four stages on Day One, but they lost more than 20 seconds after taking the wrong turn on Stage 7. On top of that, the duo broke their rear controller during the stage. After partially repairing the controller, it broke again during Stage 8 and they were done for the day.
Also done early was the team of Paul Choiniere and Jeff Becker, who began the day in second. They had transmission problems with their Hyundai and didn’t make it out of the first stage Saturday.
Comrie-Picard and Goldfarb were in third after Day One, only to have one of their pins holding down the hood of the car sheer off.
“At 90 miles an hour (the hood) flipped over backwards and shattered the windshield,” said Comrie-Picard. “We drove about seven miles looking below the windscreen. We lost about 45 seconds or so.
The duo captured two of Saturday’s stages to secure one of the X Games vacancies.
With the two X Games slots open, many teams ran their vehicles hard trying to secure one of them. As rain began falling in the early afternoon, the water kept the dust down and allowed teams to travel at higher speeds with the improved visibility.
“There was a lot of attrition today,” said Pastrana the tour’s co-leader entering the weekend. “Everyone was pushing hard today. It was a really smooth rally for us and it’s great to be on the podium.”
Both of the teams qualifying for the X Games have their work cut out for them with little time to prepare and travel plans to make.
“We’ve only got four days to get ready,” said Lagemann. “We have to find some sponsorship and find a truck that will make it out there.”
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