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MLRC Forum
https://www.mlrc.ca/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl General >> Rally >> T'is the season... https://www.mlrc.ca/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1103419407 Message started by RyanHuber on 12/18/4 at 20:23:27 |
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Title: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 12/18/4 at 20:23:27     For winter rallies! Sorry, I'm just starting to get pumped about the winter rally scene, just trying to decide if I'm going to do Snowy (I already decided long ago to drive OWR!) So, anybody else have any inspiration pics? (these are courtesy Roger Sanderson, closing car last year) |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by wedge on 12/19/4 at 00:40:43 Hey! There's my little red Paseo! Boy do I miss that car... Oh well. I've got a new Paseo now. One that I'm far less emotionally attached to. Which means I'm REALLY going to abuse the poor thing! ;D |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 12/19/4 at 00:46:38 Yeah, so I hear ;D I look forward to it man! |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 12/19/4 at 02:31:55 Oh man... I wish patrick could find the video of us going into the snowbank at snowy safari last year.... Into snowbank.... dig out using crappy plastic shovel and a hatchet (icy snowbank), get pulled by 2 different cars.. Few km later.... sharp downhill right..... the snowbank was littered with marks from cars that had hit it!..... And we added our own to it! Ended up getting pulled out down the hill backwards by 2 guys rallying in a rwd truck.... thank goodness i'd left the ebrake on, cause neither patrick or I were in the car when they started pulling it backwards down the hill... i'm just watching it slide thinking "oh shoot... those guys are gonna be pissed when we rearend them!" |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 12/19/4 at 11:08:05 From OWR last year, I remember coming over a crest and seeing headlights coming towards us, thinking "uh oh, this can't be good!" Whe we got there, it was Bryn coming up the hill, to turn around so he could try to pull Ferdinand out. Bryn had stuffed and Ferd was the next car on the scene, before Bryn had his triangle out. Ferd had to make the decision of stuffing or risking hitting Bryn, so needless to say there were two cars in the bank! Once they got Bryn out, that was just as I arrived. I just passed Bryn, pulled up behind Ferd, hooked my tow strap on which was already on the tow ring, pulled Ferd out, and kept on going! |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/19/4 at 14:38:31 ... I thought you guys were trying to get *more* people involved with Rally Sports... :o Man, seeing these pics and hearing the stories makes me wonder if I'd be better off just running away and pretending I never heard of SOWRC :-X |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 12/19/4 at 16:42:51 You have to realize, that the risk you take on these rallies is yours to take. If you're not comfortable going for the speeds, don't. Slow down, take it easy, and have fun driving your rally. That's what it comes down to. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 12/20/4 at 16:15:34 RyanHuber wrote on 12/19/4 at 16:42:51:
I second that! but on a little side note.... I kind of like having someone either infront of me or behind me (i'm either behind/ahead on time, or they're behind/ahead on time).... gives a little more incentive to really get a feel for what the car can do. I ended up with Ryan H. behind me at lanark, and it gave me the incentive to push a little more, and learn the car faster. But again.... don't expect to push without suffering the consequences... i've stuffed into a few banks now.... but nothing that we didn't lose more than several minutes dealing with. Bring a decent shovel! |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by wedge on 12/20/4 at 16:26:26 RyanHuber wrote on 12/19/4 at 00:46:38:
Yup. I'm busy preparing the car even at this very moment. I've finished gutting out the interior and scraping all the junk off the floor. I'm in the process of wiring up the Hella's and the Terratrip. *Hopefully* (fingers crossed) the cage will be installed over the christmas break. I can install the new suspension in about 2 hours all by myself. We've got 4 Yokohama IG10's, 4 Hakka 10's, and 2 Michelin Arctic Alpin's. So everything is looking good to go for Perce-Neige (and Snowy Safari too). The whole plan is dependant on the cage being installed soon enough to get a logbook in time for Perce-Neige. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by wedge on 12/20/4 at 16:29:49 dtompsett wrote on 12/20/4 at 16:15:34:
I second that! Crappy little plastic shovel's will only take up valuable trunk space. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Steve_McKelvie on 12/20/4 at 19:13:10 Last year at the Ontario Winter Rally, Frank de Kaat suggested to Harald von Langsdorff and myself that we should have packed a hoe as it is a good tool to get snow out from under the car. Steve McKelvie |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Crusher45 on 12/20/4 at 22:25:45 This would not have happened if these drivers were ice race drivers. ::) |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Do_It_Sidewayz on 12/21/4 at 01:58:04 that's right dave ;) hopefully i'll be running snowy as a "shakedown" of the rally car before Perce. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by John_Vanos on 12/21/4 at 08:05:51 Chris that sounds very much like someone elses plan who shall remain nameless but may or may not be typing this ;) |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Jeannie on 12/21/4 at 09:38:26 Sounds as though some new performance-rally teams are coming on stream for 2005! Perce-Neige will be a little more interesting this year . . . Jeannie |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Ferdinand on 12/26/4 at 19:02:58 Quote:
So Crusher, how 'bout you come on out and show us rally drivers how it's done? As an ice racer myself, I can honestly say that winter rallying ain't easy. Sure the car control theories are similar. However, the big difference in rallying is that there's a vertical dimension to play with as well. Ice racing tracks on lakes or fairgrounds tend to freeze flat, and you get to practice the course beforehand so you know what comes after every corner. But the roller coaster roads used for winter rallies tend to have curves in combination with sudden elevation changes that you cannot see over. Every corner you come to you think to yourself darn I could have done that one faster. But you only need to find ONE where you say oh-oh too fast... Our incident with Bryn at Snowy Safari last year scared me a bit because up to that point I thought we weren't taking any silly chances. Everything was under control when we came over a crest into a long steep downhill ending in a tight right. I was looking well ahead down the hill when it freaked me out completely to spot Bryn running already halfway up the hill waving a triangle. That distracted me enough that I didn't spot, until too late, his car stuck in the snowbank at the bottom of the hill. I might have been able to miss his car, but then again maybe not. Rather than risk a collision I stuck my car into the snowbank too. We both planted our triangles at the top of the hill and got to work digging out our cars. Bryn freed his car first and was coming back up the hill to tow us out when Ryan arrived on the scene. We sent Bryn on his way and Ryan quickly yanked me out. I think Harald and Steve came by too just as I was unhooking the tow rope. No harm done to any cars. Bryn was 7.9 minutes late at the next checkpoint [A8], we were 7.0 late, and Ryan 1.3 late (sorry and thanks Ryan). Can hardly wait for more!!!  |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Ferdinand on 12/26/4 at 23:10:52 Road conditions at last year's Subaru Ontario Winter Rally were evil. There was something like 20cm of fresh snow that day. In the bottom of the deep tracks left from cars ahead of us, the road surface was pure ice. But if we strayed a bit out of the ruts our tires would 'hydroplane' on the deep snow, losing all contact with the road surface. It was really difficult to get a feel for any grip. The animated GIF image above was made from this short video clip: darnWipers.mpg ~10MB. We had some traction issues going steeply uphill toward the crest of this hill. I was trying hard to limit wheel spin as it really throws off our odometer quickly if I get too happy on the throttle. Then the bottom dropped out coming over the crest. As the car momentarily went light, the deep snow started dragging the front end toward the left snowbank and I nearly lost it there. I had to make a big steering correction to pull it back straight. In the process I inadvertently flipped the wiper stalk causing the windshield wipers to shriek across the dry windshield. That sudden unexpected noise just about made me jump out of my skin! You can see from the video that we're not going all that fast. I don't think we were keeping up with the CAS at this point. But I'm fighting the steering all the way as the car gets pulled left and right by the deep snow. And in the left curve at the end of the video clip, where Christoph calls the next instruction "Stop T-Right", I had to back way off because the corner is wickedly off-camber and I get another fright as my car suddenly understeers badly. I really HATE understeer! I'm sure it's possible to do this section much faster. I just wasn't comfortable pushing any harder than this. You can see, from the photos posted by Ryan, that some people evidently pushed too hard... |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 12/26/4 at 23:30:58 Yeah, a few people pushed too hard, and then had a lot of hard pushing! John had issues with OWR last year as well, icu in the ruts and floaty out of them. A couple of those corners look like they could have benefited from a little flick entry, would have cured your understeer problem ;D |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/27/4 at 02:04:46 Wicked - thanks for the vid! If you (or anybody else) have any other/longer vids from previous events, us newbies who have no clue what to expect would really appreciate it! :D I can create a temporary account on my webspace for FTP uploads, if you don't have room... :) ... gee I wish Ian started his winter school already ! :-X |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 12/27/4 at 03:07:31 Hmmm..... how to describe what you can expect..... take that video clip, add some varying types of turns, a straight stretch or two, and perhaps a stop sign..... and you've got yourself a winter rally! Basically, if you've driven on snowy backroads at night, then you already know what to expect.... just figure that you are driving at a steady pace, you don't know the road, and there is always the possibility of oncoming traffic..... be it locals, snowmobiles, or a confused rally team. I'm gonna see about video after the holidays.... apparently my roomie/navvie has found the connection cable for his video camera. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by wedge on 12/27/4 at 09:31:47 Ferdinand wrote on 12/26/4 at 23:10:52:
I wasn't pushing too hard. My problem was that I wasn't pushing hard enough! What happened to me last year, I believe it was right at the very end of Old Hastings (perhaps Alex can correct me on that). There was a very tall crest, the downslope was very steep with a slight left, and followed by a long straight. Just as we crested the hill I could see a checkpoint at the end of the straight. As we went down the hill, I decided we were going a bit too fast, so I just let off a bit on the gas. Apparently it was just enough to transfer the weight of the car foreward, and cause the back end to slide out just a little bit. We were fine going down the hill, but as soon a we reached the bottom, the rear wheels touched the deeper snow outside of the ruts and got sucked into it. This put the car into a massive oversteer (which normally wouldn't be a problem, except that we were in a straightaway now, NOT a corner). So I countersteered, and got the car pointing straight again, but there was too much pendulum effect. The back wheels slid right through the ruts in the middle, and hit the deep snow on the other side of the road. So now we had a huge oversteer in the other direction, but with much more force this time. That was when I realize we were boned. There was no way to correct this. Our only hope was if I could keep the car fishtailing long enough, until it scrubbed off enough speed that I could control it again. But, we were not lucky that day. The next time the car came around, it went right around, I couldn't stop it. And that's how we ended up in the ditch at last year's OWR. It all started because I lifted the gas pedal about 1cm, while on a downhill with a slight left. If I had to do it again, obviously I wouldn't make the same mistake of lifting on a downhill. But even so, as long as the road is rutted like that, there's always a chance the same situation may arise. So if that happens to me again I wouldn't try to correct the car in a normal way. Because that didn't work. I think the best route would be to hit the brakes hard, and try to lock all four wheels at the inital oversteer, when the wheels first move outside of the ruts. At that point, there is not enough sideway movement for us to end up in the ditch. So we would probably just spin or slide to a stop, and then continue on our way. That's bad for our average speed, but at least we stay out of the banks. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/27/4 at 10:56:51 thanks dtompsett - still, a video is worth a prorated 24,000 words (based on 24 pictures/second @ 1000 words/picture;)). It helps me see what kinds of speeds are actually expected, as well as how normal people handle it (as opposed to watching McRae do the Rally of Finland last night, which basically caused me to quietly swear every 9-10 seconds... still the Impreza DVD was a nice gift in my Xmas stocking:)). |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by wedge on 12/27/4 at 11:24:12 The first, and most important thing when driving these events, is to drive within your own comfort zone. Don't ever drive faster than you feel comfortable. Even if that's slower than the given CAS speed. Arriving late, is better than not at all. Second, is to drive based on what you can see (or can't see). If you're coming up to a crest or a corner, and do not know what is on the other side, then be cautious. There could be an unexpected turn, oncoming traffic, a checkpoint, a stuck competitor, local wildlife. You never know what might be there. So I always drive with caution whenever I don't know what could be in front of me. I always make sure that when I come over a crest, or around a corner, that I am ready and able to swerve and avoid whatever unexpected things which may be in store for me. "McRae-style" driving is out of the question, and should be reserved only for performance rallies on closed roads. Those guys are driving at the limit of traction at all times, plus they have notes telling them what is coming up, so they are driving far beyond what they can see. So if anything is coming up on the road that they are not aware of, they are royally screwed. Just watch the footage of 2003 Rally Sweeden. When Harri Rovanpera was flying through a stage, and came across (I think it was) Roman Kresta, stuck right in the middle of the road. And there was absolutely nothing Harri could do to avoid the impact. The road wasn't wide enough to go around. There were spectators everywhere, so he couldn't ditch it. All he could do was slam on the brakes, make a stupid face, and wait for the bang! |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Schwabe on 12/27/4 at 11:36:02 Quote:
Quote:
I thought they were awesome. The only other rally with better road conditions was Snowy Safari with heavy snowfall before, during and after the rally. Fresh snow all the way... A rally with really bad road conditions was the 2003 Frostbite rally: no snowbanks and alternating gravel and ice. Anyway, can't wait to go again... ;D Erik |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 12/27/4 at 12:21:02 He's right.... video is misleading. It might have helped if we had shown more of the car when we shot ours, but I remember watching it after the event and thinking "wow, we weren't going very fast"..... even though I have a clip where my navvie makes a comment on how fast i'm going down a straight stretch. The first event I drove in was Ontario Winter Rally back in 2003, and my dad was the navvie. I had heard that we would be running south wollaston lake road, and since that is a road I normally drive in the summer, I thought I'd do a run up it in the winter. At one point along the road, my dad actually commented that "you know doug, you're not even in the rally yet, you don't have to push so hard". I was driving like I normally would have on a road like that. The best advide that I could pass along to a new team is: make sure you understand how to do the timing calculations (but if things go to hell, don't worry about the timing, just drive your own rally). Also, if you can invest in some good lights, then make sure you've got them. If you've got good lights, make sure they are aligned properly. The alignment you would use on highways is not the same alignment you would use on a twisty backroad. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 12/27/4 at 12:38:39 Yeah, I use a bit of a wonky alignment for mine, but find it works really well. Four driving lights, evenly spread so that there's just a hint of gap between them. I aim the cornering lights high, so they light the trees and mostly shine above the snowbanks. My stock highbeams are junk, so I aim them really low to give light right in front of the car. One of the centre lights is aimed straight out, and one aimed high. I find this works well for lighting the trees (so you can anticipate the next curve over the next crest), and only has a couple drawbacks. One is that they're not spread wide enough for the tightest corners, but a little bit of oversteer fixes that, and the other is that they don't reach far enough down the road for the really fast bits, but I don't tend to go all THAT fast anyways! |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/27/4 at 12:54:41 Quote:
Mmhm, that's very much the least of our worries! :) Never in the past season were we lost in terms of calculations - we always knew exactly how late we are! ;D I would think the best advice to (snow) newbies, and certainly my primary worry as indicated, is staying the heck out of snow banks. :D I do have basic aux lights installed, not sure if I'll be allowed to use them though as with the newfangled electric system it's proving very difficult to wire them to the high-beam switch :( As for video, I have enough of my own video footage to be able to compensate for perceptions. I know how slow the Lanark video looks compared to real drive (I stopped showing it to my very unimpressed friends;)) But, by comparing how fast your video of snow rallies looks to my video of Lanark, I can quite easily deduce how freaked out I should be (if it looks the same... not good!) ;D So, I'm still looking for footage, especially Ferdinand's, as he has the steering wheel & everything in the picture:) |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Ferdinand on 12/27/4 at 19:04:19 Quote:
That should always be your first objective. It sucks to get stuck somewhere. With that in mind, you should NOT try to maintain CAS through every corner and over every blind crest. Go fast on the straight sections where you can see far enough ahead to make up for the slow sections where you're being cautious. You'll live longer that way. If you don't find enough straight sections to keep your average up, tough. Taking unnecessary risks will inevitably lead to grief. Although I thought the night was one long white-knuckle adventure, I was left with hours of utterly boring video from last year's SOWR. Somewhere in there is a record of three incidents of snow bank surfing that we were lucky to get away with. One of them makes me blush with embarrassment whenever I see it again. We were just truckin' along, doing fine, when I got slightly out of the deep rut, caught some deeper snow and was pulled wide. On the video it looks like I just went straight where I should have turned left. Luckily I got the car a bit sideways at the last moment so it slapped up against the bank instead of punching in nose first. I'll see if I can find it for you guys, but it'll have to wait a couple of weeks because I'm down in Florida at the moment. The weather might be a bit warmer here, but while you guys are getting in good practice I'm stuck with dead boring dry flat roads here (not counting all the suicidal retirees weaving all over the roads here). |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Craig_Hamm on 12/28/4 at 12:01:23 The main "rules" in order of preference: Stay ON the road. (otherwise you WILL be late) Stay on the correct road. (otherwise you WILL be late) Stay on time. (the LAST of your concerns) On a winter rally, once you've dropped a minute, to heck with the timing, drive to your own personal limit/comfort-level. Because now all you want is to find a checkpoint ASAP, before you lose more time. You do not need to calculate anything once you are late enough that you can't make it up. So, just drive your buns off and pray for a checkpoint, and enjoy the ride. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/28/4 at 13:38:07 are there late allowances for novices a la Lanark, or clean timing? |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 12/28/4 at 16:18:12 right now, the time allowance thing only seems to be an MCO thing. One of the things they do on winter rallies to speed up the night is change up the break. If you arrive on time to the break, you get your full time, but if you arrive late, you leave on car zero out time + your car in #...... could leave you with 5 minutes to take a break, fill up with gas, and get out of there. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/28/4 at 16:31:05 hmm, guess we'll just have to be on time then! :> Ian Law is organizing two winter schools before January 22nd, so that eases my worries a fair bit - some quality practice time :) Btw, what about ABS & Air Bags? Are people going to be disabling these (and I will in no way hold the response a legally binding recommendation etc etc...:))? The ABS can get quite annoying (and counter-productive) in deep snow, and I'm wondering if Air Bags might go off when hitting a snow bank (as I have side as well as front airbags)... |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Craig_Hamm on 12/28/4 at 17:45:35 Where is there a link for this driving school? (MCO is offering 4 or 5 full-day courses ($150), 1-2 instructor-student ratio, and tons of seat time on a great clsoed course.) |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Wedge on 12/28/4 at 18:22:06 C. Hamm wrote on 12/28/4 at 17:45:35:
http://www.carcontrolschool.com/ One of my buddies is an instructor there. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Zweistein on 12/28/4 at 19:15:18 Heh... I'd really love to take advantage of the MCO schools - but being 450km away, this is just not practical at this juncture I'm afraid. :( |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 12/29/4 at 00:45:02 Nikola wrote on 12/28/4 at 16:31:05:
Well, I'm not worried about airbags, as I don't have any.... its something to consider.... Typically there is no easy way to disable the airbags in road cars.... on some, removing the fuse doesn't guarantee they won't engage, as some systems have backup capacitors built in (just what i've heard). So, you hit a snowbank with the airbags disabled, do either no damage or just a little bit, and they don't engage.... no problem. You really off, and hit a tree with airbags disabled... lets not go there! I guess i'd rather not have them go off if I hit a snowbank a little hard.... even if it does damage the front end. The cost of replacement is gonna hurt just as much as your shoulder from the seatbelt burns! As for ABS.... i'm still undecided on this one. Me, I have the advantage of push-button abs disabling in the audi.... came from the factory with the button on the dash to disable ABS on the fly. Perhaps there is a way to easily enable/disable the ABS, rather than getting out to pull/install a fuse. Maybe some wire leads (with a fuse installed for safety) running to a switch mounted inside... a flick of the switch will turn it on or off. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Craig_Hamm on 12/29/4 at 11:17:07 One day you do the winter driving school, the next day you can compete on the same course in the "Slush n Slide" which is run "like" a rallycross, more or less. But, it is a bit of a drive. It's sort of how we feel in Ottawa when RSO puts on the navigational school in the GTA, on weeknights. http://www.mco.org/app/skidschool.asp I believe MCO is the only club that offers this type of school. Students have included the Govenor General's drivers. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Nuwan on 12/29/4 at 17:19:40 ah, that last pic of the white legacy in the ditch is mine ::) ...Over a crest doing about 80ish and on the other side is a short downhill into a very tight right... managed to get the car turned via the e-brake but was carrying too much speed and hung the back end out into the snow bank which eventually spun the car back around the other way... took out at least 30ft of snowbank with the passenger side door (now dented)... can't wait to do it again this year :D Already signed up for this years event... hope to see you all there Happy holidays |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Ferdinand on 01/16/5 at 21:34:39 Quote:
Okay, here's a 2-minute video clip. It's not highly dramatic, but there is a lot of educational stuff happening here that newbies might find interesting or maybe even useful. SOWR2004-1.wmv (7.4MB) The first unusual thing is that we're following another car. Normally, if everyone is running on time spaced one minute apart, you could go the whole night without ever seeing another car, except at checkpoints. For some mysterious reason Martin & Ken ahead of us departed from the last checkpoint on the same minute as we did. I know we're okay. We checked it twenty times. And I doubt Martin & Ken screwed up. They don't make errors like that. So maybe the checkpoint crew mistakenly assigned us both the same time out. Please note: We are *** NOT *** racing each other! Definitely, NOT racing! Also note, we are *** NOT *** breaking the 80 km/h speed limit. You can see my speedometer throughout this video clip. Straight up on the dial would be 120km/h. The gauge is marked in increments of 20 km/h. We never go over 80. I'm happy to just follow behind these guys because it's an advantage to have someone competent leading the way. I can watch their brake lights to get an idea of what's coming up. They're not holding us up at all, and we're confident that we're running right on time, so I have no intention of trying to pass them. If anything, I suspect it's those guys who are a minute behind their correct time slot and I don't want to get in Martin's way if they suddenly wake up and realize that. The video starts as we turn left at km 125.7 and Commence Average Speed (CAS) 63.6 km/h. If you just want to finish the event and don't care how well you score, then you should completely ignore the target speeds and just concentrate on not falling off the road anywhere or getting lost. You're NOT going to be able to go a constant 63.6 km/h over every blind hill or around every corner. Use the straights when it's safe to do so, and slow down if you're not sure what's coming up. When closely following another car like this, visibility becomes an issue. There's blowing snow to contend with. Also I'm reluctant to use my high beams when running this close behind Martin because I don't want to blind him. But if I back off too much to open a gap between us, I lose the benefit of his high beams, and I find I really need to use my own. Because I'm too distracted trying to establish the correct gap, I promptly forget what speed I'm supposed to be doing. Then I see Martin's car bash through a big frost heave, which gives me enough warning to slow for it. But now I've not only forgotten what speed I'm supposed to be doing, I also didn't hear what the next route instruction was. At this point Christoph, my excellent navigator, has already TWICE told me those two bits of info. Hey, it's 4 in the morning and I'm concentrating on driving here, eh. So Christoph has to tell me for a THIRD time that we're supposed to be doing CAS 63.6, and we're looking for a 'Keep LEFT' at 126.2 km. And right there is a perfect example of another problem. We're running with only the vehicle's stock trip odometer which, compared to the bright headlights shining on snowbanks, is only dimly illuminated in my instrument panel and barely legible. Christoph cannot see the odo at all from the right seat. So I have to take my eyes off the road to squint down at the odo for a couple of seconds every now and then to try and get a reading. Often there's no time to look away from the road, so we sometimes lose track of the mileage. After this event we bought a rally computer so Christoph is able to read the mileage for us. It makes an enormous difference! When it finally clicks in my tired brain that I'm supposed to be watching for km 126.2, I don't have enough time to look down because we're in the middle of a corner. Unfortunately this corner already is the 'Keep LEFT' that I was supposed to be watching for. Christoph is patiently waiting to for me to tell him that we've passed this mileage so he can feed me the next route instruction. Therefore it's not at all his fault that he didn't warn me about the "CAUTION! - Acute LEFT at bottom of Hill" that closely follows this next downhill right, which suddenly tightens and gets much steeper halfway around the corner... As a result, I have a small panic moment where I need to grab the handbrake to keep the car from understeering straight off. [cont'd...] |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by Ferdinand on 01/16/5 at 21:38:13 This lesson demonstrates how it's the driver's responsibility to drive within his own limits at ALL times. Regardless of what the navigator does or doesn't tell you to do, if you cannot see over the hill or around the corner, SLOW DOWN! In this case, it helped a lot that I saw Martin's brake lights come on ahead of me. Still, it was an interesting moment. It looks like Martin was somewhat surprised too and almost didn't make the acute left turn. Finally I get a chance to take a quick peek at the odometer to inform Christoph that we're now at mileage 126.6, well past the 'Keep LEFT' he's been waiting for. In response to this bit of news, my incredibly calm, cool, and unruffled 15 year old son merely says, "Really?" Armed with this new information he warns me, only just barely in time, that we're coming into yet another 'CAUTION! - Downhill Hard Right'... You'll notice the handbrake light briefly comes on again to help me get the nose of the car turned in. Following these two 'surprise' CAUTION! curves, Christoph and I have a little discussion to figure out what the heck just happened there. That's also not a good thing to do. I should be concentrating on getting the average speed back up. My car has a stock trip computer that can display our calculated average speed. It's the orange display in the bottom centre of the screen. It's a hugely useful tool. I zeroed that at the beginning of this CAS 63.3 section. Had we been able to stay at 80 on all the straights, instead of slowing for the big frost heave, then fumbling our way through those surprise tight corners, and now wasting even more time discussing our mistakes, we should have been pretty close to the correct average speed. As it is, Christoph eventually winds up his explanation with yet another reminder to me that we're supposed to be doing 63.6 km/h. If you squint at the display, you might to able to make out that it's currently reading only about 47 or 48 km/h avg. Time to pick up the pace. But, the next route instruction is already coming up at the bottom of a long downhill straight. There we have to Yield, go straight through, and change to a new average speed. If this was a WRC rally, and you're Colin McRae, you might blast down this hill at top speed and blow straight through the yield sign to make up time. But it's not like that. These are open public roads. You HAVE to obey the laws. If I booted it down this hill, I may not be able to stop on the slippery snow and ice **IF** someone actually came along at that moment and I was forced to yield. I'm not even doing the maximum legal 80 km/h down the hill. Watch my speedo. The speed drops off to just under 60, and I dim my high beams to make absolutely certain nobody else is coming along on that other road, before driving past the yield sign and through the intersection. At that point my avg speed display shows we only managed to do an avg of 52 km/h over this section. If you feel like checking the math [Martin and Ken actually calculate this stuff on the fly!], this section started at km 125.7, ended at km 127.4, and at CAS 63.6 should have taken us roughly 1 minute and 36 seconds. If you run a stop watch against this video clip you'll see at our actual average speed of 52 km/h it took us 1 minute and 58 seconds. The cumulative effect of all our mistakes [all MY mistakes actually] caused us to fall 22 seconds behind schedule in this short section alone. We bumbled along like this all night long for 500 kms and still finished 17th overall and first in Novice. Martin and Ken, and several other teams, would certainly have finished higher than us, had they not later blown several minutes digging themselves out of a snowbank... |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by dtompsett on 01/17/5 at 02:13:40 Wow Ferdinand.... that is an awesome little video... good tool to show people the conditions we drive under. |
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Title: Re: T'is the season... Post by RyanHuber on 01/17/5 at 23:46:42 Yep, sure reminds you how important it is to look through the book and highlight anything that comes immediately after the previous instructions. That way, I'll give distance for the first instruction, and say "immediately into xyz" and not bother to give the actual distance unless my driver asks. Of course, when I'm driving these events, I generally do odo calcs in my head unless they're really bad. No rally odo for me yet, I don't drive enough to warrant it. Ah well... |
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