Saturday February 16, 2008 Alan Perry's Blog
Saturday February 16, 2008
Last weekend, my daughter and I ran the Thunderbird Rally. TBird is a "winter driving adventure" that this year started in Merritt, BC, had an overnight stay in Kamloops, BC and finished back in Merritt.
Despite the category of this blog entry, TBird is not a stage rally. It is a TSD or Time-Speed-Distance rally. In TSD rally, like stage rally, competitors are given a route book with timed sections and transit sections. However, unlike stage rally, instead of driving as fast as possible against the clock, competitors drive at fixed speeds. Drive 3.47km at 45 km/hr, drive 2.63km at 53 km/hr, and so on. Theoretically, the speeds are below the posted speed limits and, at least theoretically, the roads are open to non-rally traffic (more on this later).
The competitors are given the average speed and distance and have to determine the correct time to be at each location along the timed section (called a regularity). Unannounced checkpoints record the time that each car passes the checkpoint. Scoring is done by how many seconds the car is early or late passing the checkpoint and lowest score wins.
Competitors are classified by the equipment that they use to calculate when to be where during the regularity. There are rally computers that are essentially very accurate odometers that can be calibrated in to the odometer that the rally organizer used to determine the ideal times to pass the checkpoints. The average speed can be programmed into the computer and the computer can tell you whether you need to drive faster or slower. This class is called Unlimited.
My 15-year-old daughter and I ran in the class at the opposite end of the spectrum. We ran Paper class. In Paper class, you have to use the stock odometer in the car. Also, all calculations have to be on paper. No calculators or pre-calculated tables of useful values.
There are usually a lot of Unlimited class cars and not so many Paper class cars. This year was no exception. One Paper class competitor upgraded to Calculator class (Paper class with calculators and tables), so there were only two Paper class cars when the rally started.
The route of the rally is interesting. It goes between the southern BC towns and Merritt and Kamloops, a couple hours northeast from Vancouver. The route is mostly snow-covered gravel forest roads. The roads are plowed, but mostly one lane (maybe a lane-and-a-half) wide. Some spots are icy. Some spots are icy and downhill. Some spots are icy and downhill and the average speed that you need to maintain to stay on time is a little fast for the conditions. And, at least theoretically, you are sharing the road with non-rally traffic, though we didn't see much this year.
Fortunately, we were in a modern car (a VW R32) with all-wheel drive and new studless snow tires and traction control. We could concentrate on maintaining the correct speed and not worry as much about keeping the car on the road. The traction control system was a little too safe in hairpin turns, though.
A lot of the time, the average speed and the conditions meant that it was a very fun drive. I didn't have a lot of faith in studless snow tires before the rally and now I do. We kept catching the car that started one minute ahead of me (they were slow, we were on time), so, given how narrow the roads were, that kept things interesting as well.
My daughter worked out the system for staying on time and only asked me to do long division when it was needed. She did an excellent job and, as noted in the title, we finished first in class. Out of about 40 cars, we were 18th overall.
All in all, a good weekend.
( Feb 16 2008, 09:13:20 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday December 04, 2007 Video from my big rally off last year
A few weeks ago, I was at the Volkswagen dealer picking up some parts for my car. I know one of the service writers there and, when I stopped by to say 'hi', he told me that he had seen me on TV. After probing some more, I figured out that it was coverage from the 2006 Prescott Rally.
That weekend, I had a one-off ride with Lisa Klassen and we were being followed around by an independent videographer (forget her name - doh!). She was putting together a piece about Lisa to air on current.
I don't remember that weekend because we had a video camera pointed at us all of the time. I remember it because it was there that I was involved in my biggest off (rally-speak for accident) ever.
What did it look like from the outside?
The title of this entry mentions video, so where is the video? Here is the video. Most of the segment is about Lisa, but the in-car from the accident starts at about 5:30.
Looks pretty bad, eh? Well, my injuries were limited to some cuts on my hands, lots of dirt in my eyes and undiagnosed neck injuries that I made worse by competing in rallies on the two consecutive weekends following the off. My neck finished finally completely healed over last summer.
What happened? Lisa wrote up the off on her web site. However, she doesn't quite get all of the facts straight. For example, I am not sure how she could have kicked open her door without lying across me and I would have remembered that!
Also, she didn't quite get the stage note right, but the notes in the book were basically correct, maybe a little tighter than noted. The sequence was a little tricky for faster cars and probably should have been cautioned because of an accident there at a previous running of the rally.
But Lisa was still going into it too fast for the sequence that I called. Unfortunately, by the time I realized she had gone in too fast, there was nothing that I could say to change the situation. The car went light and hit the ditch. The back end may have hit the bank hard and initiated the roll. As the car rolled, the front of the roof dug into the embankment and broke out the windscreen and this filled the car with dirt. The car stopped and we got out.
But why should I complain? I got on TV, right?
( Dec 04 2007, 02:36:54 AM PST ) Permalink
Tuesday October 23, 2007 I haven't blogged about rally for some time, but I have still been doing it. This season I have continued co-driving for Gary Cavett. At the beginning of the year, I had announced that this would be my last season as a rally competitor.
I was going to retire this season, but Gary asked me to postpone my retirement a year. At the end of last season, the engine broke and Gary decided to rebuild it with a larger 2.5L block. The car was going to be very fast and he was going to make a serious run at the regional championship.
The first rally was Doo Wops in February. With the larger engine, the car was much faster for most of the first stage, then it lost a piston because of detonation because of insufficient fuel pump capacity. The car left an oil streak a half mile long.
The engine was rebuilt and we ran the Oregon Trail Rally in April. The car died on the first day of the rally because of a fuel pump issue. The fuel pump failure seemed to occur at the exact moment that I closed my door, so I think that something else was up as well, but what do I know? I am just the co-driver. We restarted the second day of the rally and the gearbox got stuck in third gear and we withdrew.
The gearbox was rebuilt and we ran the Olympus Rally in May. About halfway through the day, the clutch started to slip badly. There seemed little point in continuing, so we withdrew to allow additional time to replace the clutch. We restarted on the second day and blew the engine again with a failure similar to that which happened at Doo Wops.
Gary rebuilt the engine, installed higher flow fuel hardware and had all of the fuel injectors tested. Dyno tests showed that the engine was running well. We skipped the Wild West and Mt. Hood rallies and ran the Pacific Forest Rally last weekend. The engine died about 6km into the first stage, just like how it had died at Doo Wops and the Olympus Rally.
And that was the end of my co-driving career.
I will continue to work on the Rally America rulebook and bulletins and I will continue to help organize the Olympus Rally, but I won't be a co-driver anymore.
I am not sure how I feel about it. This past season has been so frustrating that I am happy that it is over. However, I enjoy co-driving and think that I am pretty good at it. When I watch the in-car on the WRC coverage, I want to be in a car co-driving. Also, not finishing a rally in the last year is not really how I wanted to end my career.
Who knows? Maybe I will be back in a car after I stop thinking about this season.
( Oct 23 2007, 12:46:23 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [4]
Monday January 09, 2006 Yeah, I know, I should be posting something about Firewire. I have a nice dcam1394 piece in the works, but customers might to try to use the info presented in it to do something useful, so I want to make sure that it is correct. This rally stuff, on the other hand, is less critical to get right.
So, what does it cost to run a rally?
Well, first you need to have a rally car. You can build, buy or rent one. My rally car cost me $4000, which is about as inexpensive as you can get a sorted out rally car for. The bare minimum to build and equip a rally car (if you can't weld up a roll cage yourself) is around $8k. A quick scan of Ben's Rally Classifieds shows that you can get a very fast Group 2 Golf for around $11k. You can get the car that won the Rally America national championship for around $50k. You can rent an Evo VII (with service) for a weekend for around $20k.
Please note that the rally car needs to have liability insurance because it is driven on public roads between the stages.
OK, so you have the car. Now you have to get it to the rally. You need a tow rig and trailer. Single car, open trailers are preferred because you might have to drive it up some gravel road to retrieve your broken rally car. As with the rally car, the options here vary too much to try and put a general price on it. Budget a few thousand more for this (or find a friend that you can borrow a truck and trailer from).
After you have your rally car on the trailer and the trailer attached to the truck, you have to fuel up the truck. A truck hauling a loaded trailer gets less than 10 miles per gallon. Also, if your tow rig is also your service rig, the truck needs to be driven to all of the service areas during the rally. The costs will depend on how far you have to tow to get to the rally.
You get to the rally and now you need to pay the event entry fee. Those fees run between $300 and $1200. You also need to have a competition license. Those costs are described in my previous blog.
You also need to find somewhere to stay. Rally registration and technical inspection of the rally car (called scrutineering) usually happen the day before the running of the rally. For a two-day rally, you need two nights at a motel. The Ramada Express Rally has 2 days of recce and 3 days of rally. That is 5 nights of motel for the driver, co-driver and service crew.
Service crew? Yes, you should have one or two guys to help work on the car during the service breaks while running the rally. Luckily, you usually just need to feed them and pay for their accomodations. And don't forget to stock the service rig with food and drinks for the whole gang during the rally. You don't want your co-driver wigging out on stage because he hasn't had anything to drink all day.
So, you have your rally car. You have gotten it and your co-driver and you service crew to the rally and found them a place to stay. You have gotten through rally registration and scrutineering. You are now ready to run the event.
If you keep the car on the road, the only costs that you have are wear-and-tear and consumables. The consumables in a rally car are primarily fuel and tires. In a low horsepower rally car, these costs will be low. A set of tires might last all season and a tank of regular unleaded might last the entire rally. However, in a high power, all wheel drive rally car, you could go through a 55 gallon drum of race fuel (at $6/gallon) in a weekend and a set of tires (at $600/set) in less than that. Also, as tough as rally tires are, they can get punctures and have to be replaced.
I don't even want to start getting into what the costs could be if you make a mistake and crash your car.
Is it becoming clear why I became a co-driver and why I sold my rally car ...
( Jan 09 2006, 10:00:00 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]
Sunday January 08, 2006 Rally Costs: A Co-driver's Perspective
I have been asked what does it cost to go rallying. Even though I have owned a rally car and have been constantly reminded about the costs of rallying by some drivers, what I know best is the costs for co-drivers.
Your primary upfront costs will involve personal equipment. While some teams provide some equipment (like a driving suit so that the crew will have a common look), usually you have to purchase your own.
The minimum set of personal equipment that you need are:
- driving suit. You need a driving suit that meet FIA standard 8856-2000 or SFI 3-2a/5. FIA 1986 Standard suits are still accepted by Rally America and seem to be accepted by NASA, though their rulebook states otherwise. Karting suits are not allowed. An inexpensive driving suit will run about $500 and a top-of-the-line suit is a bit over $1000. Used driving suits are also available.
- helmet. You need a helmet that meets one of three standards. With one notable exception, most helmets used in rally are Snell-rated. You need a SA-2000 or newer helmet. You can also run a SA-95 helmet through this year. Helmets can be open face or full face. Open face helmets are more common in rally for a variety of reasons. Get an open face helmet if you get car sick. Helmets can had for around $400.
A company named Peltor makes helmets specifically designed for rally with integrated intercom headsets (Peltor also makes intercom systems). Their helmets cost about $500.
- intercom headset. There are a number of intercom system manufacturers, but most intercoms used in rally are either Peltor or Terraphone. If the intercom system is something else, the team should provide you with a headset to install in your helmet. Terraphone intercoms are not as well built as Peltor, but are less expensive. You should probably carry a spare headset, because they do fail. Headsets run about $100 new and can be found used. Peltor-to-Terraphone adapters run about $50 (most of the cost is the Peltor plug!).
Optional personal equipment includes nomex underwear, racing shoes, head-and-neck restraint devices (such as the HANS device) and arm restraints. Co-drivers generally do not wear driving gloves (it is hard to turn the pages of the route book with gloves on). They often do not wear driving shoes, opting for something like hiking boots instead (better when you get stuck on stage and have to push the car out of a ditch). Also, most rallies are two-day events (and some are three-day events), so you probably want to have an extra pair of nomex socks, for example.
One more upfront cost is licenses and memberships. To compete in Rally America events, you pay $115 for the license plus $25 if you want to be scored in a Regional Championship and $95 if you want to be scored in the National Championship. To compete in NASA events, you pay $40 to join NASA and a competition license for $50. To compete in USAC rallies, you pay another $100 for a USAC license.
Those are the upfront costs. What about the ongoing costs?
There is little agreement on what the co-driver ongoing costs should be. Some drivers view co-drivers as partners, including sharing all expenses. Other drivers view co-drivers as necessary volunteers, like service crew, and pick up all costs and cover the co-driver's expenses. Some drivers view co-drivers as the primary funding source for their rallying effort.
When I first started rallying, I was in a partnership arrangement with a driver, Ross Foster. I would spend a lot of time at his place helping to build the car. When we started running rallies, we would swap who paid for what. This included things like entry fees, accomodations and food. He always covered towing costs and vehicle expenses (however, my road car was the same model as the rally, so parts were sometimes borrowed from my car). His parents and friends did service.
Ross slowly dropped out of rally and I started working with other drivers. Since then I have experienced almost everything from "pay for everything" to "pay for nothing".
Now that I am an experienced co-driver with a proven record, my normal financial terms are that I will pick up my costs, which include transportation to and from the rally, accomodations and stage note costs. Obviously, transportation and accomodations will vary. Stage notes run about $175. If the driver wants to pick up these costs, I don't insist on paying them myself. With certain drivers, I am willing to pay additional sponsorship money in exchange for putting some advertizing on the car.
Next, I will outline the costs involved in running a rally.
( Jan 08 2006, 12:00:00 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday January 03, 2006 Worry About Hurting Yourself Or Hurting The Car
Dmitri Trembovetski commented on one of my recent blogs, asking, when competing and a rally driver lifts, is he more worried about hurting himself (or the co-driver) or hurting the car.
As you might imagine, it all depends on the driver and the circumstances. Since I started rallying in 2001, I have co-driven for about 20 different drivers. However, the drivers that I have worked with have mostly been with fast, experienced drivers, so my experience is a little skewed.
Generally, the drivers that I have worked with push as hard as they think they can. There isn't any thought of either hurting yourself or hurting the car (let alone the co-driver!). When they lift, it is because they think if they don't lift, then will be going too fast to go around the next turn.
While rally competitors generally acknowledge the inherent risks in what they do (and accidents like the ones that killed Michael Park and Mark Lovell and Roger Freeman remind us of those risks), we all all take steps to reduce those risks. We are all in the car inside a strong roll cage, wearing helmets and fire-resistant suits, strapped in our seats. Some people wear arm restraints or head-and-neck restraints or sit in head-restraint seats. It is much safer than being in a normal car involved in an accident on the road, even if you are more likely to be in an accident.
Actually, a driver who is concerned about hurting himself or the car while rallying probably shouldn't be rallying. There are more important things to worry about (like staying focused on the road) and worrying about these things should help keep you from getting hurt.
So, what about the drivers who have lifted because they were worried about hurting themselves or the car?
As far as hurting themselves, there are types of situations where I have seen drivers concerned about hurting themselves. One is when they are new to the sport, don't yet focus on driving and see or feel something that scares them. This could be a big cliffs that they could drive off (called exposure in rally-talk) or the car slides on the gravel more than expected. This usually goes away as the driver gets more experienced. The other is when the driver comes across something totally unexpected and dangerous. This could be a turn that the co-driver did not call correctly (you come over a crest and the road makes a sharp right instead of continuing straight), an error in the route book or stage notes (same as above) or, say, non-rally traffic that managed to find its way onto the road and does not realize that the road is closed for a race. These are usually just concerns of the moment, unless they keep happening repeatedly (at which point, the driver rightfully loses faith in his co-driver, the route book or the rally officials).
As far as hurting the car, one unfortunate fact about most any kind of racing is that you have to be prepared to possibly have to throw the car away. Stuff happens and cars get wrecked. Sometimes folks overextend themselves to go rallying and know that they can't afford to make repairs. Sometimes they don't realize the ongoing costs of rallying until after they have to pay for repairs after a big off. When they figure out that they can't afford to pay (or don't want to pay) for hurting the car, they drive more carefully. Sometimes they forget about it. Sometimes they get even more concerned about hurting the car. The thing about rally is that even driving a clean rally, cars get hurt, so if you can't afford to pay (or don't want to pay) to fix your car, you probably should not be out there. I sold my rally car and bought a vintage road race car because rally cars generally go down in value and vintage race cars generally go up in value.
My whining about what happened at the Ramada Express Rally was more a matter of my expectations not being met with regards to experience that I would gain and exposure for my sponsor compared to my contribution of time and money to the effort.
Dmitri asked how the finances work in another blog comment. That ties nicely into this, so I'll describe that in a future blog.
( Jan 03 2006, 06:50:00 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [4]
Monday January 02, 2006 Winning A Championship in the Worst Possible Way
I won the California Rally Series Open 4WD Co-driver championship. I beat SoCal-based John Dillon, 1230 to 1092. I had a 200 point lead going into the last rally, the Ramada Express International Rally, so we just had to finish. And that's what we did - just finish.
The title of this blog is a bit of an exaggeration. I can imagine many ways in which it could have come out worse. It was still pretty bad.
I was co-driving for Doug Chernis, who has been my regular ride all season, in his Group N Subaru WRX.
Doug and I have been working together since his first rally last year. We started this season with an overall win at the Seed 9 Rally and a moral win (we won six of eight stages and had no brakes on two of the stages). Then we rolled the car at the Rim of the World Rally in May and missed the Treeline and Gorman rallies while the car was being repaired. We were back for the Prescott Rally in October, but Doug was driving with the throttle pedal connected to his wallet, that is, very slow and cautious.
Leading up to Ramada, Doug was talking about being comfortable in the car again and driving at a competitive pace. Unfortunately, this isn't what happened. He was backing off on the straights and not putting in competitive times. However, he was showing signs of getting more comfortable.
At the start of the second day, Doug seemed to be getting even more comfortable and put in a respectable time on the first stage. Unfortunately, on the second stage, I made a bad mistake in calling a turn and we had an minor off-course excursion that could have been really bad. We were lucky to get away with a puncture. However, that was the end of the rally for us as far as putting in competitive stage times.
The near-off stuck in Doug's head for the rest of the day and he drove so slowly. We were slower than last year by minutes and this was his second rally ever then. The last stages were run after the sun went down. The wind went away with the sun and heavy dust hung over the stage. This made us even slower. The only car slower than us on the last stage suffered a headlight failure and was lead out by a sweep vehicle. We were slower than a car that had to stop after it had struck a deer.
I could understand that Doug had a lot of money invested in the car and didn't want to damage it. However, it is a competition car and he chose to entry it in the rally and cars get damaged in rally. (That is one of the reasons that I sold my rally car and bought a vintage Formula Ford.)
Also, he asked me to make a substantial financial contribution to the team and I think that I was owed a better effort as a result. I could have taken that money and paid for entry fee, notes, hotel and recce vehicle rental for someone else who would have made an effort to the end.
Whine, whine, whine. At least, I won my championship.
( Jan 02 2006, 12:54:00 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]
Monday June 20, 2005 After competing in the Rim of the World Rally at the beginning of May, I was really looking forward to a break. The next rally that I planned on running was Treeline in the middle of July.
As usual, things did not go to plan. I have had last minute requests to co-drive every rally within driving distance and I must be addicted to this rally thing because I keep saying yes.
The latest last minute request came from Peter Van Bogart who would be driving his 2002 Mitsubishi Evo VII RS that he normally just rents out.
Mountain Trials is based in Merritt, British Columbia, Canada and is a recce event. No prepared stage notes. Just a route book and whatever notes you can take driving the stage roads for two-and-a-half hours.
Since I had not done a recce event (without stage notes) in over a year and Pete had never done recce before, the notes were a complete mess. I wasn't sure how I wanted to note things. Pete was driving too fast for me to get everything down. We got lost at one point and had to end recce early because we didn't have enough gas in the car.
As I was rewriting the notes so that I could read them in the rally car during the event, I was thinking about just throwing them all out because I knew that I would get lost in the notes.
In the end, it didn't matter. The notes were good enough for Pete. He started driving back before stage notes and pace notes were used in the US, so he can read the road. On two of the stages, we actually ran out of notes before the end of the stage, but Pete could deal with it.
Our only goal was to finish without wrecking the car. It is a full Group N spec car and everything on it is expensive to replace. However, at the end of the first two legs, we were in second overall, 58 seconds behind the fast local team of Scott Trinder/Bill Westhead. Pete was going to take it easy on the last leg until he found out that he was only 18 seconds ahead of the car in third.
It didn't seem like we were going that much faster, but we were. We won the first two stages of the leg, taking over 30 seconds off of Trinder/Westhead's lead. To complicate matters, an oil seal on the gearbox failed and the car was pouring gear oil onto the exhaust. We had opened the gap back to third by a large margin. Because of this and the gearbox problem, we cruised to the finish.
So, we ended the rally second overall. I was just happy to finish.
( Jun 20 2005, 07:23:52 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Monday June 06, 2005 This last weekend I competed in the Dryad Quest and Shitepoke Rallies, based out of Shelton, WA. This time around, I was co-driving for Barrett Dash in a Subaru Legacy.
I didn't intend to compete in this rally, but it wasn't going to cost me anything except gas to get there, Barrett is one of the faster drivers in the Pacific Northwest, and it was only an hour from my house. That last part was important because I ended up spending the second day of the rally doing yardwork at my house.
The car started the day with cooling problems. Because the coolant temperatures were high, we swapped out the single fan radiator with a dual fan radiator after two stages. However, the combination of high engine speed and high boost proved too much for the new radiator to take.
On Stage 4, with 3 miles to go, the fitting on the radiator end cap that attaches to the coolant hose blew clean off. A steady stream of steam poured out of the hood vent. Barrett did not let this slow him down too much. I let him know how far it was to the end of the stage and he kept pushing the car as fast as it would go. We crossed the finish and the engine stopped. The car coasted to the stop control, where we got our time for the stage. We considered the rally over for us and got a tow back to the service area. I turned in our time card.
However, while I was walking through the service area, telling my friends about our woes, the service crew were reinstalling the first radiator to see if they could get the car running for the rally on the next day. When they got everything reassembled and tested the car out, the engine ran OK. One of the service guys went and got our time card back and we were back in the rally.
We ran the next stage and, while the coolant temps were high, they settled to a spot just below overheating. But it didn't last.
On Stage 6, an 11 mile stage, we started seeing coolant steam coming out of the hood vent about halfway through. Then the coolant steam stopped and the burning oil started. Barrett was going to change the engine anyway and was going to either finish the stage or blow the engine trying. Oil smoke was blowing out of the tailpipe, engine bay and ventilation system (until we turned off the vent). I was waiting for the engine to blow, but it never happened. The car got slower and slower, but, again, we managed to cross the finish before the engine stopped. We got our time and pushed the car out of the control.
When we looked over the engine, there were no coolant in the cooling system and no oil in the sump. There was oil all over the engine bay. The engine was toast.
And I turned in our time card for the second (and final) time.
( Jun 06 2005, 09:33:15 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Wednesday June 01, 2005 What's a stage and a transit and recce?
In my blog on the Rocky Mountain Rally, I presumed an understanding of stage rally that some folks might not have. I'll try and correct that here.
Stage rally (sometimes referred to as performance rally) consists of a series of timed runs on closed sections of road (called stages) connected by a series of untimed sections on open, public roads (called transits). On a stage, cars are started a minute apart and the driver drives as fast as he can against the clock (no wheels-to-wheel action, unless he is a minute faster or slower than the car ahead or behind him). On a transit, cars are going from one stage to the next and must obey all traffic laws (including the speed limit).
Cars are occupied by a crew of two people. The driver drives the car. The co-driver navigates and deals with time controls set-up throughout the rally.
In the US, most stages are held on unpaved roads, usually logging roads, forest service roads or desert roads. There is no practicing stages. When the driver is driving the stage, it is the first time that he has seen the road at speed, unless he has competed on the road before. The driver depends on his ability to read the road and process directions given to him by the co-driver. The co-driver reads directions to the driver from either a route book, stage notes or pace notes.
A route book contains instructions that describe the stage route in the form of pictograms (called tulips) and mileages for each instruction. Usually, only road hazards and junctions are included in a route book. Rallies that only distribute route books are sometimes called blind rallies.
Stage notes and pace notes are similar. Both include every turn, junction, surface change and road hazard on the stage. Stage notes are prepared by the rally organizers (or a third-party) and pace notes are prepared by the competitors. Competitors prepare pace notes by being allowed to pre-run the stages, subject to the normal speed limit of the road, through a process called recce. Few events in the US offer the opportunity to do recce.
The timing of a rally is tightly controlled. Teams are given a certain amount of time to travel the transits and must check in at time controls preceding each stage within a particular minute, based on when they checked in at the preceding time control.
The way that this works is that the crew starts the rally at an assigned initial time (let's say, 12:00). The rally starts with a transit to the first stage and the crews are allowed certain amount of time to travel that transit (let's say, 40 minutes). They must then check into the time control at the end of the transit (and the beginning of the first stage) on the correct minute, based on the time allowance (between 12:40:00 and 12:40:59 in the example). The crew then run the stage. At the end of the stage, they are given their actual finish time (e.g., 12:45:21). They drop the seconds portion of the finish time and add the time allowed for the transit to the next stage (e.g., 20 minutes). They must then check into the time control for the next stage on the correct minute (between 1:05:00 and 1:05:59 in the example). And they continue the day like this.
The rally is scored by adding the actual time to complete the stages as well as penalties for making a mistake, such as checking in for a time control too late or too early. The crew with the shortest time wins.
Hope this gives some sense about how the whole thing works.
Note: In case you are wondering when I am going to write something about the stuff that I work on (Firewire), it will be after I get comfortable writing for blogs so I don't say something stupid about something important!
( Jun 01 2005, 11:26:26 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
Tuesday May 31, 2005 This past weekend, I ran in the Rocky Mountain Rally, held around Calgary, Alberta. I was co-driving for Richard Penrose in what was probably the coolest rally car that I have ever been in. The car was a 1996 Ford Escort Cosworth, used by Colin McRae and Nicky Grist to recce during the 1999 WRC season.
Since we were running in the Regional rally, the event started Friday night with two runs through a spectator stage set-up in a motocross park in Calgary. These stages were just for show, offering little opportunity to improve position and huge opportunity to break the car and end the rally. Richard did not push too hard and we were fourth overall in the Regional.
The next two legs of the rally were in the Porcupine Hills, about two hours south of Calgary.
On the transit to the first stage of the day, the gearbox popped out of fourth gear. It had done this once during the shakedown and once during the odometer check, but it did not seem like a consistent problem. After we started the stage, we found out that we were wrong.
The stage was mostly high speed runs, fourth gear stuff, but fourth gear kept popping out. To make matters worse, the clutch started acting up and the gearbox was baulky when selecting other gears. We finished the stage with a mediocre time and transited to what would be the last stage for us.
At the start line, the clutch was slipping. Despite the clutch pedal being pressed all of the way to the floor, the car would creep forward and we were very concerned about being hit with a jumped start penalty. Once the stage started, things were better. There were more third gear turns and the car felt faster. Unfortunately, the problem with fourth gear caused Richard to leave the car in third gear longer than he should have. This, combined with the smallish radiator in the car and the relatively warm air temperature, caused the coolant temperature to rise. A couple km from the end of the stage, the cooling system failed in a cloud of white smoke.
That's rally. Of course, that is easy for me to say - I don't have to get a Cossie gearbox rebuilt and buy a larger radiator!
( May 31 2005, 10:18:57 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]
