For some reason my race calendar said there would be an autocross
in Picton on the 29th of September. I had the Miata all ready to go,
and good thing I double checked online – the Autocross was actually on the
following weekend. Lucky for me there was a rallycross happening in Bancroft on
the 29th. Quick change of plans (and cars), a phone call to my partner
in crime, and we were on our way to Bancroft.
We arrived just in time for the driver’s meeting at 9am, and
how surprised were we to find the organizers of the Picton autocross there!
Maybe they changed the Picton date so they could attend the rallycross… Funny
enough, they also decided to give rallycross a try and pitched in for an
Impreza wagon. Although the car they bought was a GC and cost about half of
ours.
At the driver’s meeting we realized that the course we’d be
doing was different from the winter one, in that it was longer and also
included a forest section. As in driving sideways… through a forest… with trees
and such. We were quickly reassured by the organizers that all the dangers have
been clearly marked with pylons, and that cars never roll over at their events –
they just “tip over” into the soft, fluffy sand. Wonderful.
Out on the course, it wasn’t very clear as to why the 2
second penalty for cones was in place. The cones were set directly in front of
trees, rocks, sand dunes, sharp drop-offs... I’m pretty sure that if you hit
them you’d have bigger problems to worry about than having 2 seconds added to
your time.
After a few runs, it was clear that our times weren’t
particularly great. I could blame the crappy 10 year old Korean winter tires,
our useless brakes, the fact that we ran with 3 people in the car, our tired
motor, but it was probably more down to not having enough cojones to drive flat
out through the forest section. Especially one chicane where the ideal line lay
as close as possible to two sand dunes, and if you get it wrong by several
inches, you’re “tipping over”.
The other thing that worried me is my over-complication of the
technique. I’ve watched enough WRC to know that to be fast you have to
left-foot-brake, do Scandinavian flicks, and scream at your navigator to read
out the pace notes faster. I was a natural at that last technique, but sadly it
didn’t have any use at rallycross, so I decided to practice the others. I’m
still far from mastering them, but I had them down to a point where they
clearly helped pivot the car in a turn. Couple times my left-foot-braking gave
me so much rotation it seemed like I yanked the handbrake. But what puzzled me
is that when speaking to a couple of the top drivers, who were beating me by as
much as 12 seconds on a 2 minute course, I realized that they do none of that!
How the hell are they faster if they haven’t even taken the time to learn the “proper”
technique? Must be the tires…
At the end of the day, I was 17th in class (out
of 22), 23rd overall (out of 42) while Danil was 16th in
class, 22nd overall beating me by 0.7 seconds in total time. His
fastest run time was also better, by about 1.5 seconds. Far from our results at
the CNY rallycross. Still, could be worse…
One of the guys in a GC coupe was barreling down into the
second to last corner as his front wheel snapped off, and went on its own way
for a good few hundred meters until it finally realized it needs a car to move
any further. It was a steely that completely sheared off the lug nuts and flew
off. Studs still in place, and nuts bolted down. This is the third time I see
this happen to steelies, and is the reason we run aluminum Outback wheels. The
guy was dragged off the course by a tow truck, got a new set of wheels on, and
was good as new, save for a fender the wheel bent as it flew off.
We had a bit of a moment with our car too. Coming off the
course after our very last run, we parked in the paddock, and popped the hood
to give it the usual glance-over to make sure the motor was still under there.
As we looked in, we saw a bit of smoke coming from the back of the motor,
pretty much where the transmission was. Strange, what the hell could be smoking
there? While the guys continued scratching their head, I thought I’d come
around the car and have a peek underneath. I got on the ground and… Fire! The
cat got so hot, it set the dry grass in the paddock on fire! I hopped into the
car, popped it into reverse and dumped the clutch to get it away from there as
the guys rushed over to our tool stash for some water to put the fire out. I
quickly remembered the story of a 12 week old Porsche that burned down to the
ground at Shannonville from the very same cause. Needless to say, we now carry
a fire extinguisher to every race.
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