Alan Perry's Blog

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]