It is Thursday night and Team Mitsubishi Alcan is just a little over a day away from beginning our adventure to the Arctic. This Tuesday we held a team "packing party" where we brought both cars and all of our equipment together to make sure we have all the major items we are bringing along and to see if we have missed anything important.

Last weekend, April and I took Car-1 up to Merritt, BC to compete in the annual ThunderBird TSD rally. It gave us a good opportunity to get in some pre-Alcan practice in the snow and test-run. During a transit on Sunday, we had a rare electrical failure of one of our Hall-Effect sensors hooked up to our Timewise 798A rally computer. Since we had a backup sensor already plugged into the other odometer input of the 798A, it was easy to switch over to the backup. On Car-1 I have installed three odo sensors for our rally computer for redundancy - one under the hood on the right-front axle, and one on the left and right rear axles. The right front is always connected to one of the 798A odo inputs, and the other input can be switched between the left/right-rear sensors. For Alcan, we will be using both right-side sensors to feed into the 798A.

Today, two replacement sensors arrived in the mail and I replaced the failed unit on the right front-axle and put the skid plate back on the car.

My primary role in Car-1 is navigating and flipping switches on the computer to keep us on-time during the TSD sections. My other team-mates, April will be the primary driver, and Kevin will serve a dual role as driver/navigator.

Thank you very much to our generous sponsors that made this endeavour possible!

Mitsubishi Motors - for two rugged Outlanders to conquer the Arctic in safety, comfort.

Hankook Tires - for a complete set of 6 high performance studded snow-tires for each car.

Columbia Sportswear - for outfitting the team with top-of-the-line winter gear and accessories.

Tanner Halton & The Halton Co. - for their generous financial support

H3R Performance - for the fire extinguishers

BajaRack - for the roof racks

ProDrive - for the skid-car training

A-n-T Tire - for mounting our studded snow tires.

Snap-On Tools - for a set of very nice tool bags

Russ Nyberg at Racetech Fabrication - for the skidplates

Fleet Sign & Graphics - for the cool looking vinyl decals on the cars - adds at least 50 more horsepower! :)

KC HiLites - for the great HID rally lights on our team's Car 2

Marcus Song is a leading Time-Speed-Distance navigator with extensive experience as both a driver and navigator in computer-equipped cars, and he has wide experience in operating multiple types of rally computers. 

He has been rallying since 1999 and has won several TSD events at both the local and national levels. This includes winning an Equipped class championship in 2005 and finishing 2nd place in Unequipped class in 2002 in Cascade Sports Car Club's annual rally series. He has also competed in numerous SCCA National Road Rally events with several podium finishes including placing 1st in Stock class at the season-ending SCCA United States Road Rally Championship in 2003. He is a seasoned rallymaster and has developed several TSD rallies for local events.

Together with teammate April Smith, Marcus won the Gran Prix Imports Oregon 1000 rally overall in late 2007, and recently finished in 6th position overall at the 2008 Thunderbird Rally in Merritt, British Columbia. 

On the performance rally side, Marcus started driving his own Production class car in 2006, and recently finished 2nd place in class in just his second performance rally event. Marcus also competes as a driver in go-kart racing.

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Marcus makes his home in Beaverton, Oregon and has worked as an microprocessor engineer for Intel Corporation for the past 9 years, designing well-known products such as the Pentium-4 and the Intel Core-Duo processors.