kturner wrote:
What gets one a “Coefficient” (or better yet, what is it?). I see that a driving school can be worth up to four but I am not seeing what gets you the additional ones needed to reach 9. Do you get one per sucessful event? Can you get multiple Coefficients per event? How are they dolled out?
it's kind of like experience points. the number of coefficients a rally is worth varies based on number of competitive stage miles. a short one day rally might be worth 1 point and a longer 2 day event is worth 5 points but you only get them if you finish.
a 4 day rally school and a 2 day rally may get you 9 coefficients.
Group 2 and open light cars are plenty fast enough to ball up in the trees.
Cool, doesn’t sound bad at all. A school certainly wouldn’t hurt. Never did one that wasn’t fun.
I have no problem driving a “slower” car until I can get my unlimited licence. I didn’t start off on 200+rwhp 375lb motorcycles!
I hope I can either rent a car for an event or two or maybe just buy an entry level car to use that is already prepped and when the Mustang is ready to go I can park it for wife/friends to use or as long as its not wadded up I could probably sell it for close to what I paid for it. But I will most certainly be building a S197 Mustang with a V-8 so I will need the unresticted licence sooner or later.
Thanks
Jason wrote:
you will want to try and track down: Mark Utect, he's a long-time Mustang advocate and actually used a 2010 Mustang GT for an event last year
Any one know how to get in touch with Mark? An email address maybe? I would love to get a look at his car(s) and pick his brain for a bit. I will be doing a chassis up build so there is no excuse for not doing things right. Knowing things like “trouble spots” in advance would be great. If not I am likely to over-build the car to death.
Thanks!
RoadRacer78 wrote:
Any one know how to get in touch with Mark? An email address maybe? I would love to get a look at his car(s) and pick his brain for a bit. I will be doing a chassis up build so there is no excuse for not doing things right. Knowing things like “trouble spots” in advance would be great. If not I am likely to over-build the car to death.
Thanks!
Easiest thing to do would be to hop on over to specialstage.
Unfortunately, his rally mustang is gone, but there's lots of reminiscing, pics, and a few technical details in this thread: http://specialstage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41645
I got a hold of Mark Utecht the other day and he was gracious enough to spend almost 2 hrs on the phone with me going over car design/prep. What a great guy and what a fantastic source of information. He probably literally short cut’ed me at least a season of trial and error. Some of my prep assumptions were WAY!!! off. And other stuff that I thought I would need to do I don’t.
Thanks for pointing me in his direction.
Other things/events to try during the learning period.
In the northeast, the NEHA hillclimbs count at coefficient 1 rallies in the northeast championship. These are tarmac events. They are a lot of fun, and are a very supportive environment. Also, Rally New York has a few rally sprints that are shorter distance events, which are perfect for someone just getting their feet wet. You can see the events on special stage.
Do not cut corners on the cage, you will need it sooner or later. Often it's a lot sooner than you expect.
Find yourself a good co-driver, that is willing to work with a new driver. A good co-driver is a wealth of information.
sachilles wrote:
Other things/events to try during the learning period.
In the northeast, the NEHA hillclimbs count at coefficient 1 rallies in the northeast championship.
That’s great! I wanted to do a few tarmac hillclimb events with my “street” car anyway. I was going to do a few this year but ran short on time. Thanks for the heads up.
sachilles wrote: Also, Rally New York has a few rally sprints that are shorter distance events, which are perfect for someone just getting their feet wet. You can see the events on special stage.
I'll check those out.
sachilles wrote: Do not cut corners on the cage, you will need it sooner or later. Often it's a lot sooner than you expect.
Oh yeah, I will be going nuts with the cage. By the time I am done it will be one step away from a tube chassis car! Thankfully I have or have access to every piece of equipment one could need to fab anything. Everything from tubing benders to CNC machines. I am crazy paranoid about safety. I have had some pretty nasty crashes on bikes (two at 165mph+) and aside from getting beat up I have always faired well. I chalk that up to buying the best safety gear that I can get my hands on. $800 helmets are cheap when they save your nugget! And $450 gloves seem like a lot till you get your hand trapped under the bike for 75 yards and you don’t have any broken fingers or road rash.
sachilles wrote: Find yourself a good co-driver, that is willing to work with a new driver. A good co-driver is a wealth of information.
I have no doubt that an experienced co driver will make things a lot nicer. I hope I can get hooked up with someone who has been there and done that.
Thanks!
