Ferdinand wrote 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.
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...
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.