A rally story
Three weeks after having completed the CASLL rally school,
Will and I were all set to run our first ever stage rally with my beat up Mazda
323 rally car. We’ve done a couple of TSD rallies before, but never anything
like this. We both have many events under our belt, but most of them are linked
to road racing and time trials.
Saturday was the tech inspection. I was a bit intimidated
when I noticed that my car was the most rusted and the most unkempt-looking.
These other people actually washed their cars before coming here! I was also
starting to doubt whether my tires would cut it in the severe snowy conditions.
I was also worried I had forgotten some important element of car preparation.
When my turn came, the inspector and I started talking about Solo 1, and when
he found out I was president, that truly broke the ice. The car passed
inspection with no problem. I just have to add our names to the car and our
helmets, and add a safety blanket to the 1st aid kit. I talked with
a few other competitors, and they seemed like a cool bunch. On the way home, I
lost a windshield wiper, luckily on a road just before coming to a Canadian
Tire (and arriving there 15 minutes before closing).
Sunday we left my place at 5:15 to drive one hour to the
rally. We dropped off Will’s Audi at the service area and went back to the
Subaru dealership where the drivers had to start the parade into town. This
“parade” was supposed to be done in an orderly fashion to the Parc Exposé 3 km
away. This did not happen. There were 33 cars in the event. Most left late and
in random order. Surprisingly, there were very few fans at Parc Exposé. I went
there as a spectator last year and there were many people. Of course, last year
at the same date there was no snow and it was a lot warmer.
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| Ready for tech inspection |
We were told in the driver’s meeting to have fun in the
first special stage and to watch out in the second one. In the first stage, I
drove conservatively and was satisfied with the result, as was Will. When we
later saw the times, we weren’t last or close to it. The second stage was not
really even a road. More of a trail. It also had a clear Yump in it. We took it
really easy. We were 30th on the road and the ruts were deep. The
car was almost steering itself. The jump was on a bumpy downhill stretch. I
took it easy and we never actually jumped. Still, we were satisfied that the
car was doing ok and we were staying on the road.
On the third stage is where the problems began. First there
was a hill I could barely get up because of the snow and ice. I had to back
down the hill (safe because in Rally-sprint, there’s never more than one car on
the stage) a bit to take another run at it. About a kilometer later, I went a
bit wide on the exit of one turn, and the car grazed the snowbank on the side of
the road and quickly got sucked into it. The problem with these snowbanks is
that they weren’t high enough or hard enough to bounce us back onto the road.
Also, they weren’t low enough to simply back out of. The car was well and truly
beached on the snow. We were very fortunate that there were about 10 fans who
showed up to help us out. I foolishly had left my shovel at home, but no amount
of shoveling was going to get us out of this snow. The spectators resorted to
the extreme measure: lifting the car out. The car was parallel to the road, but
half on it and half in the snowbank (we hadn’t spun or anything, simply been
driving too near the snow bank and been sucked off the road). They managed to
lift first the back out, then the front and we were off, having lost around 8
or 9 minutes. Did I mention the whole rally lasts less than 20 minutes? By
then, we knew we were out of the running. We compounded this with a 2 minute
penalty due to miscalculation of our ideal time, but it was not 2 minutes that
would make the difference now.
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| Between stages |
By the 4th stage, the rally was running
ridiculously late. The first few cars were showing up to do their 9th
stage (same location as the 4th) and the last few cars had not even
run the fourth one. The stage was uneventful for us. We went on to the 5th
stage and it went pretty well. We had a little scare when Will called a medium
right which was in fact a hairpin right (the route book had 2 rights then a
hairpin right, we counted the 2 rights as one double apex right and were
surprised by the hairpin) and I managed to pitch the car sideways with the
brakes and power it out. Basically, it was the only turn of the rally where I
think I used proper rally technique. It turned out to be our best time, 22nd
out of 33.
After stage 5 came the only service of the day. Many teams
were already finished the whole rally! I decided to change the two front tires
for some really aggressive hand-modified winter tires (instead of my normal
winter tires). I hadn’t used these since the beginning because I only had two
of them and because they were 185’s and my other set were 155’s. However, I
wanted traction to get up hills, so I put them on.
The 6th stage was uneventful. The rally stewards
had allowed cars that got there early to run right away to speed up the event.
This resulted in us running absolute last, since we had taken the full 70
minutes for the service (and our lunch, at 3:30!). The tires were indeed much
better. I kicked myself for not using them earlier. The 7th (same
road as the 2nd) stage was cancelled and we drove through it on the
way to the 8th. It was getting dark so we had to use the bigger
lights. These rallies are supposed to finish in daylight, but we were told by
some experts that this isn’t always the case. Given that the 9th stage
was cancelled on account of darkness, the 8th stage would be our
last.
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| The illusion of speed... I don't think we ever drove as fast as this photo makes us look! |
We arrived at the service area long after anyone else. The
others were already drinking and the results were already being printed. We
finished dead last (I think we took double the time of the winners!) and on top
of that, one of the other rookie teams finished 3rd with their
home-made rally computer. We technically weren't last as a few teams DNF'd. I
didn’t feel any kind of joy, simply relief. I clearly don’t have gobs of
natural talent for low-traction driving. I definitely can’t blame the car for
my poor showing as the previous owner won his class with this car at this very
event in the past (as well as many others).
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