[Editor's Note: This article originally ran in the October 2010 issue of Grassroots Motorsports]
Piloting a rally car quickly and competitively requires a broad range of pretty unusual skills. Not only do you have to race on tarmac, gravel, snow and ice—sometimes all on the same stage—but you must also use some very specific techniques for handling this loose terrain.
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I wish BFG still made rally tires, they were the bomb! Actually for many years I ran a set of take offs from ACP sometime when he was running the scion, I only sold them last year for what I paid for them after using them for years on end.
No surprise FWD cars are often faster than RWD in the same classes. Most of the RWD cars people rally are from the 80s (aside from the few people doing the BRZ thing or Hooper's Lexuses), so it's a bunch of 30-year-old stuff where the "powerful" ones are like 200hp.
Meanwhile, you can get 200hp++ in any number of modern, smaller and lighter, FWD cars with way more parts availability, etc. (Fiesta STs, for instance).
But, they're not having nearly as much fun :)
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The other part not mentioned about rally at high speeds: Going 100mph 5 feet away from big trees and huge drops into a river valley below is way scarier than going 100mph with a tire wall 100 feet away. I've almost never scared myself on a road course (in a 6-cyl e30), but I probably scare myself 50 times in any given rally (in a 6-cyl e30 going much slower).
Also not mentioned: In rally, half the time you can't actually SEE where you're going or look ahead to link turns (many are blind, or you're in someone's dust, or it's dark). On the track you know the whole course after a few laps and can also usually see what's coming up.
ACP's as good a writer as he is a driver.
RallyJon said:ACP's as good a writer as he is a driver.
'09 GT-R · '14 Cayenne Turbo S · Past: '02 996 C4S · '95 993 C4 · '71 911 RS look · '04 STI · '01 S4 Avant · '00 Impreza RS Turbo · '88 Celica Alltrac Rally Car
I was just sort of randomly scrolling through my Facebook feed recently and he was doing a live video just hanging out in his garage rebuilding some old carbs... wearing a GRM work shirt. Pretty cool.
Anybody want to help me make sense of this part? I'm probably being too literal/linear/clueless and it keeps reading like "transfer weight to the rear, then transfer weight to the rear"...
When it’s time to aim for the turn, get out of the brakes and blip the throttle, transferring weight to the rear and snapping the car into the corner. Then, get back on the throttle to transfer weight back to the rear; hold the line and pull the car around the turn.
I can't quite get my head around what's actually happening with "snapping the car into the corner" with a blip of the throttle... Is there perhaps a lot of meaning in the breath between that blip and the "get back on the throttle?"
Jesse Ransom (FFS) said:Anybody want to help me make sense of this part? I'm probably being too literal/linear/clueless and it keeps reading like "transfer weight to the rear, then transfer weight to the rear"...
When it’s time to aim for the turn, get out of the brakes and blip the throttle, transferring weight to the rear and snapping the car into the corner. Then, get back on the throttle to transfer weight back to the rear; hold the line and pull the car around the turn.
I can't quite get my head around what's actually happening with "snapping the car into the corner" with a blip of the throttle... Is there perhaps a lot of meaning in the breath between that blip and the "get back on the throttle?"
The first blip causes the rear end to plant and then get light (dig and lift), that lightness causes rotation, then, get back on the throttle to cause the weight to transfer where you want to finish the corner/hold the slide/whatever.
In reply to Jesse Ransom (FFS) :
You skipped a step: "First, steer away from the corner to accomplish some braking. "
So as I read it, although I probably have at least some (possibly all) of this wrong still, this is describing coming up to the corner on the brakes and steering to initiate a slight sliding (which also scrubs speed) away from the corner. That's what's already happening at the beginning of the part you quoted. By blipping (on and off) the throttle, you're transferring weight rearward to create the rear grip to catch that 'wrong way' slide and then immediately transferring it back forward to create the positive front grip and negative rear grip to snap it back around toward the corner. With the slide coming around hard toward the corner, you need to transfer the weight back to the rear again to effectively get it under control.
In reply to Driven5 :
I omitted that because it made sense to me to go from that part (weight forward, setting up for the flick) to weight rearward, but I was thrown by two steps in a row that both transferred rearward.
I think your (and WonkoTheSane's similar) explanation makes sense, and simply wasn't explicit enough (for this particular dingbat) about the forward weight shift on the breath between the blip and getting fully back on the throttle. I think I was a little thrown because the rest of the description was so explicit about cause, effect, and purpose, and this part wasn't quite as much so, leaving the lift portion of the blip implicit in its existence and effect.
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