Subaru Rim of the World Rally Challenge
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Lancaster, Calif.
Press Notes – Saturday Mid-afternoon

9. Stage #2 at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds in now completed, and the Subaru WRX Production All-Wheel-Drive entry of Marvin Ronquillo from Colton, Calif., and his co-driver John Burke from Riverside, Calif. Continue to lead the event overall with a combined time of 8:25.3, ten seconds ahead of the Ford Ranger truck of Bill Holmes (Malibu, Calif.)/Kevin Carter (Simi Valley, Calif.) and Lisa Klassen (Alta Loma, Calif.)/Guido Hamacher (Orange, Calif.), whose cars are tied for second at 8;35.4.

10. The previous second and third-place cars - George Plsek/Gwen Laeng and Leon Styles/Matt Gauger – are now down near the bottom of the standings after both cars high-centered on the burms during stage two. As the first pairing on the course after the water truck had spread its load over the track, both cars found the stage more slippery than expected. If you don’t finish a stage, you get the fast time plus two minutes, so both cars fell out of contention with stage times over six minutes and total times over ten minutes.

11. The Ford Ranger truck of Jessica Laeng/Lon Peterson glided into a burm and gently rolled near the end of the stage. Peterson immediate took the blame as the veteran co-driver has been coaching Laeng, an aspiring race truck driver. She had a small cut on her hand, and the truck had cosmetic damage, so ther was never a question whether the truck would run stage #3, which starts at 5:30 PM PDT.

12.The Cem Akdeniz/Alan Adam Subaru Impreza has withdrawn the rally with a blown clutch.

13. For Stage Three, all the 2WD entries were paired up, followed by the 4WD cars. This gave us very interesting match-ups, including rally leader Marvin Ronquillo was the fastest rated driver George Plsek, and teacher Leon Styles against student Lisa Klassen. Here are the highlights:

--The Ford Pickup of Bill Holmes/Kevin Carter, which had been tied for second place, turned a 4:15.7 to move into first place in the rally, but Lisa Klaussen broke that tie with a 4:15.1 to move into first place after Ronquillo lost power partway through his run and fell a full minute back. During Lisa’s stage, Styles suffered a flat tire and fell even further back.

--Plsek also fell further back, also suffering a flat tire.

--The Eli Gilbert/Mindy DeLodder Mitsubishi Galant rolled, but drove off the course under its own power.

--The Tim Moser/Dick Moser VW GTI moved all the way up to third overall after turning the best time of the stage – 4:12.3

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