Photo by Rally-America, used with permission

The Third-Lane Motorsports team looked forward to the Oregon Trail. Noah and Jason were building on a successful run June 14th at the Pacific Forest Rally in Merritt, B.C. There were 21 Group 2 cars entered; a challenging and exciting weekend of racing was guaranteed. The roads were said to be fast and dry. The car was well-prepared. We were ready.

Saturday the sun was bright and hot, by 9 am the temperature was already in the high 70s. It was going to be a hot weekend. The service crews set off early from the Parc Expose at the Hillsboro Stadium, to set up on the grounds of a high school in Vernonia some 35 miles away. Excitement and anticipation were the order of the day.

Providing service is like camping with cars. You find a good location, scope out the bathrooms, spread out the tarp to mark the team’s landing and start to haul out the tires and tools, floor jacks, jack stands, fuel containers, air tank, spare parts---basically everything in the back of the truck! Once the area is set up, the coolers and food containers appear, the folding chairs are set up and hopefully there’s a chance to relax and re-connect with rally friends before the cars pour into service and the action begins. It is a hurry-up-and-wait situation with hours of relative boredom punctuated by short periods of intense activity.

With a mobile radio in the service truck, I can monitor the radio net and keep in touch with Noah and Jason through their radio in the rally car. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab was a welcome relief from the heat and the rally dogs were only too happy to hop into the truck to be with me. While Tasha leaps easily and lightly into the cab, Labradors apparently do not "leap" and Lucy's back end always seems to need a boost to get her off the ground into the truck. No small feat (she weighs 80 pounds). Settled into the cab, the three of us followed the progress of the course opening over the radio.

The three minute warning was called to the helicopter for the benefit of the television crews filming overhead. A few minutes later, the radio operator at the start control announced that Car 4, Mark Lovell and Roger Freeman, had started. The dusty conditions and still air meant that the top Open Class cars were to start in three minute intervals and the rest of the field would start in two minute rather than the standard one minute intervals. Just as this thought left my mind, a radio operator called a stop to the stage. Three minutes had not passed. The second car was still on the start line. The first car had gone off the course.

On the radio we heard that the marshals were on site almost immediately, the EMS crews were called and the remaining cars were held at the start. The team was not out of the car, they were not OK. Life-Flight was called to air lift them off the site. SCCA officials and safety stewards were called for. No word on the condition of the driver and co-driver was given and the radio operators moved to an "emergency/safety" frequency to discuss the accident.

Word of an accident spread across the service area as handheld radios dangling from side view mirrors and canopy struts broadcast the information. We waited for more details as did the teams sitting at the start of Stage 1. The sun became very hot as noon approached, not a breeze. Minutes became an hour and we waited.

It is the lack of information that indicates the seriousness of an accident and as time passed and radio communication all but ceased, conversations fell away and as the hour passed, people began to fear the worst. From where we were parked, we could see the Subaru service crew pack up and leave, the second Subaru team, Car 5 had withdrawn. The accident had been serious.

The cars were finally directed back to service. As the teams returned, they brought bits of information about the accident that had filtered back from the stage start. Very little was said, considering the situation, everyone is well aware of the dangers inherent in rallysport---there seemed little need to speak about it. The atmosphere was subdued as crews and teams used the break for lunch.

Around 12:45pm a drivers meeting was called and organizers explained that the first car had left the course about one mile into the stage and hit a tree. No information about the condition of Mark Lovell and Roger Freeman was provided other then to say that they had been airlifted and that more information would be available at a follow-up meeting set for the end of the day. The rally would restart with Stage 2. In addition, Stage 4 (Stage 1 repeated) was to be abandoned and the abbreviated event would restart as soon as possible. Members of the organizing committee encouraged the teams not to speculate about the accident, not to discuss "rumours," rather they should focus on the stage at hand. More information would be available by the end of the day. The teams organized themselves to leave and the cars turned out of service one by one. The rally restarted.

Noah and Jason returned to service after Stages 2 and 3 had been run, a short break for fuel and they were gone again. Stage 5 seemed to go well. Then, monitoring the radio for the start of Stage 6, we heard that Car 253, Third-Lane Motorsports, was out of sequence. Within minutes, Bruce Tabor could be seen riding his bicycle through the parked service vehicles towards us, shaking his head as he came. The guys were unable to start Stage 6, they had called for the service crew.

One of the more frustrating jobs of the service crew is having to retrieve the car in the dark from somewhere along a stage. The main challange is finding the car. Derek Bottles in Car 292 was a great help relaying radio messages and providing directions as to where the car might be found.

photo by Wayne Flynn, used with permission

About 10 miles along the transit route to the start of Stage 6, we found the yellow Golf parked across from a tavern, the guys out sitting on the hood in the cool night air, waiting. They had hit a deer about a mile from the end of Stage 5.

Noah explained: "Jason had gotten the hang of the course notes and we were cooking. We came around a left turn and there was a deer running across the road - but it was not quite fast enough. I braked as hard as I could and we managed to slow down enough to just clip its hind end. After the stage we found that the radiator was punctured and leaking coolant. We considered limping through Stage 6, just to finish, but even if we made it the 9 stage miles we still had to drive the 60 miles back to Hillsboro."

We filled up their radiator and followed them as they drove back to the service area to park the Golf. Back to Hillsboro we drove to fetch the trailer. Jason and Noah stopped to attend the drivers meeting, which was just beginning in Hillsboro.

At the meeting that night, the deaths of Mark Lovell and Roger Freeman were formally announced and information about the accident provided. The Washington County Sheriff’s office suggested that their car was traveling between 80 and 120 mph when it went off course less then a mile after the start. The Subaru Impreza WRX left the road and crashed driver’s side first into a three-foot wide tree. It skidded across the road, became airborne and landed in a ditch. Both Mark Lovell and his co-driver Roger Freeman were pronounced dead at the scene from head, neck and chest injuries. Marshals had reached them within moments but there was nothing they could do, it appeared that they had died on impact. SCCA President and CEO, Steve Johnson was in attendance and he, in consultation with other SCCA national staff, national and regional safety stewards, local organizers and local officials had met with the Subaru Team USA Manager, Dave Campion, a close friend of Mark Lovell, to decide on a course of action. Their decision had been to continue the event and so the restart had been ordered.

This was the first ever fatality during a SCCA event in Oregon, the first in four years of US ProRally competitions. It will be at least two weeks before Oregon State Police and the Washington County Interagency Crash Analysis and Reconstruction Team will report their findings. Counselors were made available for anyone, competitors, workers or organizers, who needed to debrief in an attempt to process this tragic event.

On that sad note, we drove back to Vernonia and loaded the car on the trailer. We drove back once more to Hillsboro to drop off Jason at his hotel before starting off to Portland and Noah’s home. We left the car on the trailer and fell into bed about 2 am. We had been on the road almost constantly since about 9 pm.

We seldom provide such a narrative description of our experience of an event. In this instance, it seemed impossible to discuss the team’s experience without putting it into the context of the day. We all are aware of the danger inherent in this sport . Intellectually, we accept it as the price of admission to the excitement, joy and sense of accomplishment that comes with rallying. The real life price that the sport can exact was made plain to us at Oregon Trail.

Our sincere sympathy goes out to the families, friends and team mates of Mark Lovell and Roger Freeman. Our support and thoughts are with the organizing committee of the Oregon Trail.

Some photos from service are available in gallery 1 and in gallery 2. Our next event is the Wild West Rally September 7th & 8th .

last updated 7/22/03