My brother brought his fancy-pants camera and took some stellar shots. I'll try to get a few to post.
Overall thoughts about the event:
We arrived around noon -- just in time to watch the second stage rip through. We sat in the 'elevated' spectator area (basically a steep hill that's trackside and filled with sand and a lot of pointy sticks). It made for some spectacular views though. Every minute or so a car would fly past, spewing dust and gravel everywhere and rip up the hill, 'round the bend and out of sight. It was funny to see how seemingly every driver picked a different line through the curve -- WRC this was not.
A silver STi was a crowd favourite when it came in a little 'hot' , drifted through the curve and ended up going so wide it just kept driving into and through the ditch in front of us all. One Qubec competitor driving (I think) a euro-spec AWD rally Golf was seen making head motions as he tried to accelerate up the hill ("Come ON... move!!! where's the power?!" sort of gestures).
The only manufacturer backed team was Suzuki... A logical choice would be to campaign a new SX4 (great promo opportunity) but no, they chose a Swift. Yeesh.
My favourite was a '77 Porsche 911S bought on eBay for $4500 at the start of the season. With the big Hella lights on the front, it just looked so right.
Back at the 'paddock' area, it looked more like a national Subaru club meet than a rally. Every Impreza, Legacy and even Baja from Eastern Quebec to Northern Ontario must've been present.
I've definitely got to commend the organizers of the event and the citizens of Bancroft for putting on a neat event -- and all free to the public. If the goal is to try to encourage a greater fanbase of rally enthusiasts in Canada, this is definitely the right way to go about doing it. The beautiful, sunny weather certainly helped!
