For 2011 the Demon Rally Team looked forward to competing at the Doo Wop Rally to shakedown the newest evolution of their Fine Tuning Sponsored Volkswagen Golf. Unfortunately, the early season cancellation of the Doo Wop Rally disappointed the team, but the rally’s reincarnation as the Olympus Rally motivated the team to compete in an event they haven’t run in over two years. Needless to say the team is amped to compete at the 2011 Olympus Rally on April 30-May 1st.

This once famed WRC event has had it all including Group B monsters of the day. The event started back in 1973 and has been going strong ever since. In 2011 the event is based in Ocean Shores, Washington, overlooking the coast of the Pacific Ocean just south of the state’s capital city of Olympia. This event is round three of the Rally-America National Championship and all of the big dogs should be on hand to compete including most of the Pacific Northwest’s top 2wd teams.

The 2011 MaxAttack!â„¢ Rally Series Presented by Danza del Sol Winery runs in conjunction with the Rally-America Championship and holds three annual events. This series is setup specifically for two wheel drive cars and Danza del Sol helps the series $15,000 in cash for placing well in the series. This is the 5th year of the series, and will be the fourth Max Attack event that the Demon Rally Team has run. While we’ve had mixed results at Max Attack events and encountered some equipment issues, the team placed fourth in MaxAttack and 1st in Group 2 when they traveled to Michigan to compete against the best 2wd drivers in the nation in 2007. The MaxAttack series is our number one reason for choosing to compete at the Olympus Rally this year.

Amongst other reasons why we are competing at the Olympus Rally is because the event shares one of the Demon Rally Team’s favorite stages, the infamous Brooklyn Tavern Stage. The Brooklyn Tavern stage is an open rural county gravel road, closed only once a year for this event, its twisty and banked nature have created one of the greatest and most renowned stages in the nation. In 2008 the Demon Rally Team set a Group 2 record on the stage blasting through the 7-mile stage in 7:02 averaging a hair under 60mph through the stage. The Group 5 record is fully 13 seconds faster than their current record; while the team isn’t looking to eclipse that mark, they are looking to bring it at the familiar Doo Wop stages the Olympus Rally currently runs on.

2011 brought with it the passing of a great Pacific Northwest rally enthusiast and Doo Wop rally legend. Ray Damitio was dedicated to the sport as well as his community, friends and family. The team first met Ray in 2006 when they ran their first event at the Doo Wop Rally. His booming voice commanded attention and you could tell that this man was well respected among everyone. Ray appreciated the efforts of the little guys in racing and brought with him a quality in rally that will certainly be missed. The Demon Rally Team appreciates his efforts and salutes him and his friends in his passing.

We hope we can put a good show on for Ray at the Olympus Rally this year. Thanks for reading and as always, we’ll see you out there, sideways.

While we hadn’t had the chance to shake down the car yet, the car got some significant summer time upgrades including a new turbo fastening system, an improved and revised cooling system, as well as a new ported cylinder head. Touting the new and improved version of the G5 Golf, the Demon Rally Team made the trek to Hood River, Oregon.

This Mt. Hood Rally was held on October 23, 2010, and while it wasn’t a new rally, it was a new rally for the team to compete at. Being a local rally took a lot of the big event pressures off the team; local rallies are our rallies, we are the top guys and we are in charge here. Unfortunately the rally didn’t come without our typical and untimely pre-event glitches.

In the weeks and days leading up to the event we decided to take the car out and ensure the tuning was up to date as well as the performance of the cooling system and all of the other crucial systems the car employs during a rally. While I didn’t have the opportunity to assist in testing the car, two members of the crew were able to put the car through its paces on the east side of the state. Unfortunately I got the call no team owner wants to hear just a few days before the event. Third gear was gone in our new transmission. I went on a late night rescue mission to get the car back to the shop. The transmission was pulled and we were able to source a stock transmission prior to the event in order to make it. There would be next to no time available for testing prior to the event.

Bright and early prior to sunrise, the Demon Rally Team left Seattle, Washington, and arrived in Hood River, Oregon for recce and relaxation….Or so we thought. We passed the car through tech after hard-wiring a switch for reverse and got registered for the event. While the crew stood by at service, we headed out to pre-run the stages and make notes in reconnaissance or recce as the rally world calls it. Recce went well and we packed up for the evening.

We woke in the morning and decided to drive the car up to town for fuel and to get a couple more miles on it before the event. we made it to the local gas station, only to find that the car wouldn’t re-start. A quick jump start and we were back on our way to service. Unfortunately enroute to service the car began sputtering and dying. It was a sound I was familiar with, just a few months earlier I had driven the car to a local car show and encountered the same thing, the battery was dying. Luckily when we rolled into service, we were able to locate a loose wire for charging and get the car re-fired and made sure the battery was charging. Finally we were ready to race.

Stage 1, 17 South, started with typical butterflies and apprehension about the car’s longevity. Not having driven the car in anger for nearly a 6 month period, waiting in the control zone gives you time to reflect on how much you wish you had been able to beat on the car at least once in its new configuration, and hoping that loose wire was the only thing that would be a problem at this event. Off into the stage I realized how dearly I missed the transmission that should’ve been in the car, the gearing was well off and the open diff was sucking the car into loose gravel relatively consistently. The stage was a smooth fast flowing stage that reminded me of my favorite stage I’ve ever competed on, the Brooklyn Tavern stage. Recce proved to be working well, despite the fact that our numbers were just a hair off for the corners, luckily we weren’t pushing very hard and I got used to the notes about 3/4 of the way through the stage.Nonetheless we set a decent time of 6:15 over the 6.2 mile long stage, averaging close to 60mph. Our time was 5th overall, 29 seconds off of the leader, and just behind Brian Svedin’s Open class 4wd Subaru Impreza. We were 1st in 2wd by just 5 seconds in front of Dave Henderson in his Group 2 2wd Mazda 3.

On Gilhouley North, stage 2, we were excited to run on the tight, twisty and technical road. Writing notes for recce on this stage was a challenge because of the number of tight and varying degree of corners on the stage. When we started into the stage, Don was kicking butt on the notes and rattling off instructions like a true stage rally veteran. I was happy with our effort through the stage and we set a time of 6:43 over the 5.15 mile long stage, averaging over 46 MPH. We tied for 5th overall with Victor Bartosek and his fire breathing open class 4wd Audi Quattro at just 33 seconds off of the fastest time. Interestingly we were second in 2wd a full 21 seconds behind Dave Henderson. Hendo was definitely putting his Mazda 3 through the paces and pushing some limits. I’m excited to exchange stage times with him in the future.

For Stage 3, Fir Mountain South, we knew we would have our hands full. Pre-running the stage in Recce let us know that this stage was the toughest of the event and would definitely be the roughest on the car. Little did we know how rough it would be. The first four miles of the stage were nearly flawless, The car was performing fairly well, despite having to tighten up the new fasteners for the turbo between stages; a big thanks to car #203 for that 10mm wrench! Part of the way into the stage a photographer caught us running a hair too fast into a corner, while it wasn’t the fastest way through it made for some good pictures.

Unfortunately another two miles into the stage something let go and we coasted to our final resting place for the rest of the event. While we didn’t hear or see anything from inside the car, someone caught us on video from above shooting a five foot flame out of the back of the car!

Five Foot Flame Video!

While it turned out to be another testing event for us, we our hoping for a solid debut with a few more upgrades in early 2011. We’ll see you out there, sideways.

Thousands of local European car enthusiasts had the opportunity to meet a few members of the Demon Rally Team a few weeks back at the regions largest and most popular European car show.

The event was held at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, Washington on July 17 and 18th, 2010. The event is a motorsports event and car show, on the 17th Brendan of RalleyTuned with a lot of assistance runs a cone squishing autocross competition in the large open parking lot of Cheney stadium. This year, the autocross was a big part of making the event much more than just a car show. Seeing actual motorsports being incorporated into car shows gives the true motorheads hope for the future of motorsports competition.

We arrived on Sunday, and in typical Demon Rally fashion the car was not in mint shape, however, also in typical Demon Rally fashion the car was able to make the 60 mile trek from the Demon Rally compound in Seattle, Washington to Tacoma without charging the battery. Unfortunately when we got to the event the battery didn’t have enough juice to fire the motor and we were off to find a battery charger in order to make it back home.

We set up a display tent and played highlight videos in the background on our computer and handed out some new fancy business cards to the show goers, a lot of folks started collecting the different images on the business cards and we had started a new fan base without even realizing it! By the end of the event I was dead tired, there were alot of people asking about RP Turbos, about Fine Tuning, JRM, Spitfire EFI, as well as how we put all wheel drive into the Golf. I let them in on the secret that we beat STI’s and EVO’s without All Wheel Drive, because we drive harder and faster than the majority of the field.

After selling alot of T-shirts, and touting the car and everyone that works for the team, Tom had a chance to run out through the car show and reminisce about his old VW Rabbits, as well as look at a very inspiring all wheel drive drag Corrado that had a good amount of fabrication lined up in the car. Tom said it was good to see other enthusiasts putting forth effort into the Competition side of cars.

It was a long day at the car show, and Tom was beat after chatting up rally and the team, but overall it was a darn good time to meet a lot of local enthusiasts. The team made fresh new contacts in the industry as well as bring rally to new fans.

We have to say a huge thank you to Dave Meister of Meister Autowerks for putting on the event at Cheney Stadium. Car shows are a massive undertaking and he has really turned this event into one of the best in the country, so we appreciate his and his staff’s monumental undertaking at this event. We also want to thank Fine Tuning for their continued and unwavering support of the team, JRM, RalleyTuned, Product Apparel for printing some new shirts for the new car, RP Turbos for turning on slow anemic normally aspirated race car into a fire breathing monster, spitfire EFI for being the best solution for EFI in the pacific northwest. The Demon Rally Team has the best group of folks supporting them, help us by visiting our sponsor’s websites and using them to achieve your motoring goals!