While the majority of the focus for the American Rally Association was on Oregon Trail Rally last weekend, back east in Missouri, the Super Regional event of Show-Me Rally was taking place.
With 36 cars on the entry list, it only had about half of OTR’s field, but plenty of action and excitement to make up for it.
The two day rally had ten stages covering about 75 miles, making for plenty of opportunities to trade times and positions with fellow racers.
Competitor Michael Hooper of the River City Rally Team told DirtFish of the stages, “Conditions were quite tricky with night stages and significant dust on new roads. Floyd Tower, Brazil, and Pigeon Roost that have been run before were used again and fantastic as always.“
Overall, Johnny O’Sullivan and Kenny Quirke were able to run away with the win in their Ford Fiesta R5 running in Open 4WD. O’Sullivan managed to take a win on every stage except for SS8, pulling a nearly two minute lead on the rest of the field.
Second Place Zachary Jacques with his co-driver and father Ronald would have been able to close that gap closer, but according to Hooper, the duo were, “lucky to get away with minor offs on stage three and seven with a puncture taking 40 seconds off their time.”
The final podium position would go to Hooper himself with co-driver Matt Vaught joining him. Hooper would also take first place in O2WD behind the wheel of his Lexus IS350, making for an extremely successful event all around.
“2WD had great competition with Micah [Nickleson] and Tyler [Ptacek], Ryan [George] and Heather [Stieber], and ourselves all setting top times, in addition to Spencer [Sherman] and Boyd [Smith] being in the fight.”
“Unfortunately [Nickleson] and [George] both got caught out with mechanicals, and we were able to secure a solid lead in the dust of the night stages on Friday and the fast Pigeon Roost on Saturday, which we know well, and even had an overall stage win on eight!”
The O2WD podium would be rounded out by Sherman and his Ford Fiesta in second, with Al Dantes Jr. and his LS RX-7, Rexine taking third with co-driver Shanti Witt.
The podium was enough for Dantes to secure the O2WD East Championship win as well.
NA4WD saw some of the closest competition for the win of all year between Dylan Gondyke and Ryan Rethy. Rethy was able to barely hold on to the lead for the whole rally and the two swapped stage winning times, but was overtaken on the last stage by Gondyke for the win.
The podium was rounded out in the class by Ankit Patel and Trevor Dobbins who were a couple minutes back in their Subaru Impreza RS.
L4WD was won by Todd and Valerie Briley in their fourth ever event. This would mark the pair’s first class win, which was rather dominant with the team holding the lead the entire time.
Thomas Anthony and Oliver Smith were able to move up from fourth to second over the course of the rally to take the second podium position, and third was taken by the duo of Taylor Jesse and Matthew Myers.
Finally, in L2WD Jake Burke and Eric Schlee drove their Honda Civic to the win, while Nathan and Elliot Odle were able to take second place in Michael Hooper’s sister car, the RCR Lexus IS250. Paul Hubers and Steveon Olana sat third on the L2WD podium in their 2017 Honda Civic.