Pat and I, as well as a few of our homies entered into a Winter Rallycross event in Bancroft, Ontario this past Sunday. I was actually driving this time around, so I didn’t really have much of a chance to film anything. That said though, I did bring out my newest lens (a 10-20mm 3.5 from Mr. Andrew Bohan of Lifeblasters fame) to give it a little test run.

I started off by testing out my new lens’ ability to shoot from a moving vehicle. When we spend so much time driving to all the events we go to, I tend to like breaking out the camera to try shooting some of the scenery outside the window, just for fun. I’ve never had a wide enough lens to be able to really get the kind of shots that I wanted until now.  That said though, shooting in the dark from a moving vehicle isn’t the most ideal situation, and makes it hard to get a crisp focus on anything. I took a couple shots of the sunrise before deciding to give up and wait for better lighting conditions.

Our entry into the Rallycross, as well as our ride home was my 1995 Jeep Cherokee Sport. It’s got the inline v6, (the high output one, that’s right. 4 litres, punk) as well as a manual 5-speed transmission, and it’s pictured here on top of a snowbank (intimidation is key in this kinda sport, I think). Needless to say, this thing is a bona fide sleeper Winter Rally machine. It doesn’t look like much, but it chomps through the snow like it’s nobody’s business.

As soon as we got registered we received some stickers telling us which event we happened to be at.

Our homies George and Jover were competing against me in the RWD division with this 1985 Corolla AE86. You may have noticed the Nissan badge on the front. That isn’t actually a joke, believe it or not this car actually has a Nissan KA motor under the hood! There’s all sorts of other craziness going on with this car that we’re not going to get into right now.

Our homie Francisco came out with his RB-powered 240sx, obviously also in the RWD division. He gave it his all, but managed to come up just short of the podium with a 4th place finish.

And yet another competitor in the RWD division (apparently the most popular division this year) was this Lada. I don’t know much about it, but it looked really cool so I shot it.

This is who everybody was competing against. No, not the dude in the Audi, I mean the clock! Each driver would drive 6 laps, and their place would be determined by their total time over the 6 laps, so this race was more about smoothness and consistency than just getting the fastest lap possible.

One thing that can be said about Autocross, or this kind of Rallycross, is that there is a lot of waiting. Not that it’s anybody’s fault, it’s just the nature of the beast. After you finish your lap, you have to wait for all the other guys to run their laps, and then eventually things will come back around to you again and you’ll get back out on the track. It’s made slightly less fun by the cold.

Extraneous, unnecessary bits sometimes tend to get left on the ground at events like these. Likely a result of some on-the-fly weight reduction.

After a few hours of bouncing around in the snow, we went back to the hunting lodge (yes, I’m serious) to have some lunch. While there, George decided to get started on making some seat covers for his van. It’s a long story, but let’s just say that he brought his dog along and while they were out driving the dog left some presents on the seats. Anyway, I decided this made for some good journalism, and snapped away.

This was the scene outside the window. It was so wintery and beautiful in Bancroft, I was kinda jealous. 3 hours away where I live, it’s all dreary and soggy and really generally unpleasant out, so it was a really pleasant change to actually see some proper winter weather.

Another few hours of bouncing around in the snow would go by before we were all ushered back into the hunting lodge to find out the winners of the day. I had at this point written off any chance of a podium win, in part because I thought that the winner was based on fastest lap, and also in part because I thought I had just been too slow all day. I’d had one lap which I felt went really well, and the rest all had little errors that I could’ve cleaned up. Anyway, I had just noticed that they had honeybuns on the cookie plate as they started announcing the podium finishes in the RWD class, and in third place was a dude in a BMW who I noticed had definitely run a couple laps faster than mine. I figured I was in the clear so I started snarfing down the delicious honeybun when all of the sudden:  ”And in First Place…its Daniel Cyr!” I was stunned. I was also mid-bite in honeybun. I don’t know if anybody had a camera out, but the look of shock on my face was likely beyond priceless. It’s been a long time since I’ve won something proper, so it was a pretty exciting moment for me, especially since I really hadn’t expected a win from the get-go. Pat wound up taking third place in the AWD division, so it was actually a day of podiums for the Cyr boys!! Not too bad for a pair of bright-eyed first timers just getting a feel for the snow, eh? (Props to Jover for snapping the shot below)

As we stepped outside, I noticed that there was a pretty rad looking sunset starting to develop, so I figured I’d pull the camera out to give it a try from a static standing position instead of from a car.

With the festivities for the day complete, it was finally time for us to head back home and call it a night….or so we thought. But our wondrous championship chariot felt a little bit differently about the whole thing. With a full day of getting slanged around the rally course under its belt, the Jeep finally decided it no longer wanted to keep its water pump. We managed to limp the Jeep to a nearby Tim Horton’s where we discussed our options.

Unfortunately, getting a tow truck out to where we were at was going to take an inordinate amount of time. We decided our best course of action would be to leave the poor Jeep behind and pick it up the next day (which we have done, as I’m writing this). We told the Tim Horton’s staff we’d leave it in a discrete spot in their parking lot.

I’m definitely happy with the newest addition to my lens team, and even happier with my 1st place finish at the event!! I need to try some more of this rallycross stuff next year, because it really was a blast this year! Win or lose, it’s hard not to have fun out in the snow. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!!

- Dan

PS. Did you like the larger picture format? I saw it being used on an ultra-popular lifestyle photography website and I liked it a lot, so I thought I would give it a try myself. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know!