Often the Best Lessons Come the Hard Way

Coming off our last event at Sanair with a first-place finish, it would've been easy to show up at the P'tit-X de Charlevoix expecting more of the same. But rally has a funny way of keeping you humble.

From the moment we rolled into Charlevoix, the weekend had all the ingredients for a great rally. Amazing weather, incredible scenery, great competitors, interesting roads and the usual mix of excitement and controlled chaos that keeps us coming back. Whether you're behind the wheel, calling notes, or wrenching between stages, there's just something about rally weekends that's hard to beat.

The stages delivered exactly what we'd hoped for — relatively fast, technical, demanding enough that they never let you get comfortable and most importantly, completely different than at Sanair. Every run gave us another chance to learn, adapt, and try to be just a little bit better than the stage before.

Things were going well through the morning, sticking near the middle of the pack, right up until they weren't. We flattened a cone at one of the chicanes. A painful time penalty, but alas, we can't always have clean runs. After that run, we were back at the service park for lunch, and we had to push that cone out of our mind. It took time, but thankfully we got refocused before the afternoon started.

The afternoon was going well too... until it wasn't. Just after crossing the finish line of Stage 11, we heard the unmistakable sound nobody wants to hear as we smashed into a pothole; the front passenger tire had blown out.

Normally that's frustrating but manageable.

Except...

We didn't have a spare. We had specifically removed the spare for weight reduction, figuring that the stages were going to be short all day, we probably wouldn't need it. Lesson learned - you never know when you're going to need the spare!

But that meant there was only one option since we still had a stage to go, along with a drive back to the service park. Thus, for the final stage of the rally, we drove on a blown front tire.

Was it ideal? Absolutely not.

Was it fast? Also no, although, still faster than we thought possible.

Was it memorable? Without question.

It's amazing how quickly your priorities change when one corner of the car is riding on what used to be a tire. Suddenly you're thinking differently about every corner, every braking zone, and every input. It wasn't the way we wanted to finish the event, but it certainly made for a story we'll be telling for a long time.

The results sheet won't show the whole picture, and honestly, that's okay.

One of the biggest takeaways from the weekend is that we probably learned more by not placing well at this event than we did by winning the previous one. Success is exciting, but adversity is where the real education happens. You find weak spots, you solve problems under pressure, and you discover what both the car and the team are capable of when things don't go according to plan.

Those lessons are worth far more than another trophy.

A huge thank you goes out to the organizers, volunteers, officials, and everyone who made P'tit-X de Charlevoix happen. Events like this don't exist without countless people giving up their weekends so the rest of us can go play with rally cars in the woods.

We'll get the car patched up, add one more item to our ever-growing list of "things we've learned," and get ready for the next event.

Because if rally has taught us anything, it's that every finish line—whether you're standing on the podium or limping across it on a blown tire—is another step toward becoming a better team.

An extra special thanks to Gramac Racing for providing these incredible photographs.