NEWRY —  Early Saturday morning, Sam and Gracie Drown awakened their parents in their Augusta home.

The children were eager to make the two-hour trip to Sunday River Ski Resort to see and greet their favorite New England Forest Rally drivers at the 7:30 a.m. Parc Expose session. After that, the drivers and navigators would head to racing stages in New Hampshire and northern Oxford County.

“I see one! I see one!” 3-year-old Sam Drown screamed, his voice louder than the partially muted roar of Alvin Fong’s No. 127 car as it entered the Parc Expose lot.

Gracie, 5, the shy one, came to see rally racer Verena Mei of Littleton, N.H., and the other four female racers, said her mother, Diana Drown.

Mike Drown, a Ken Block fan, said he’s been coming to the New England Forest Rally since 2007. He likes everything about rally racing.

“You’ve got cars that are awesome,” he said. “They drive really fast. The drivers are really nice and approachable, and it’s good for the family, too. Sam likes to look at the cars; Gracie enjoys it, and it’s just a fun thing in Maine.”

“It’s fun to spend time with the family and see the kids get excited,” Diana Drown said.

Fifty-one rally cars participated in the Parc Expose, although 52 cars raced Friday on Maine dirt and gravel woodland roads.

The heavy odor of spent fuel competed for attention with the other senses as drivers revved engines that purred throatily.

Once all were parked, fans streamed in by the hundreds. Others waited in line to board school buses that would take them to spectator stages to watch the action.

Team O’Neil and Brent Lee Motorsports racer Brent Hercelinsky of San Diego, Calif., said he took fourth place on Friday in the two-wheel drive category with a Ford Fiesta R2. He was leading the “Rookie of the Year” distinction.

“The roads were awesome yesterday,” Hercelinsky said. “Concord Pond was really fun. I had a great time on that. Icicle (Brook Stage) was really long, so you could get a really nice easy flow going, but you still had to be careful.”

Rain sprinkles on Friday kept the dust down and made the roads “nice and grippy,” he said.

Hercelinsky said that he and navigator, Alex Orozco, also of San Diego, were pushing 80 to 100 mph and taking some of the tighter corners at 40 to 50 mph. That’s slower than they usually go, because there were a lot of rocks and ravines on either side of some roads, and they didn’t want to chance a rollover.

Racer Tingwu Song of Denver, Colo., however, took the risk of running his Mitsubishi at higher speeds and paid the price in the last stage on Friday on the Icicle Brook Loop off South Arm Road in Township C.

“We were only 2 miles in, and I got too comfortable with the capability of the car,” Song said of himself and navigator Martin Brady of Galway, Ireland.

They had the lead by 40 seconds. He said he believes he was traveling 100 mph in sixth gear when he suddenly realized the corner was too tight for that speed.

“We slid sideways and I tried my best to downshift to get our speed down and almost got it,” Song said. “I slid through the first corner and the next tighter one got me. We hit something on the outside of the road in the ditch, and the whole car lifted into the air and flipped one and a half rotations and cleared the roof and cleared my door and we hit (on the passenger side).”

They also hit a tree with the rear end.

Song said they climbed out the driver’s window and pushed the car down onto all four wheels and tried to move it out of the way, believing they were done. However, a course official told them they could continue if the car ran. They got back inside and it drove fine. But they’d lost their lead and finished in about 38th place nationally.

Overnight, the team’s mechanics “worked their miracles and fixed the car,” so Song and Brady were ready for Saturday’s racing, although Brady said his back was sore.

Rally fan Cindy Trinward of Gray and Bethel talked with Song, wanting to know if they were all right. She said she heard they had flipped the car end over end.

“I think what scares me the most is they’re going that fast out through the woods,” she said. “The turns are so intense.”

Her husband, Kevin Trinward, said they were heading to the annual European Motorcycle gathering at the resort’s Jordan Grand Resort Hotel and stopped in to the rally.

“The wife’s getting autographs, and I’ve been talking with racers,” he said. “It’s pretty neat.”

Cindy Trinward said she met a female racer from Australia, and Mei and her navigator, Leanne Junnila of Calgary, Canada.

“They are all so sweet, just the energy and the spirit,” Trinward said. “Great energy — I mean everybody is so friendly and it’s international. Oh, I love it. Friendly souls. They’re just so happy.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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