You can have two in the car for RallyX. You could write course notes and run it like a short performance rally with a navigator.

For the road rally stages people could bring navigators or perhaps it could be arranged to drivers team up on the day and trade off driving and navigating. Shareing a car would make this easier but even using separate car might be possible.

Obviously this would require some thought but it probably could make it work.

I'm not proposing this as a replacement to the Rally X so no issue with single seaters or those that only want the 4 minute thrill. Just a way to make the whole thing more interesting and generate some more interest for road rally.

I believe the Alcan rally has some Rally X stages so I don't think this is a heretical idea.

 

Ok, great. I started this thread, and then wanted to let it run for awhile so I could get feedback without coloring the results.

You all have pretty much confirmed my own opinion: the primary reason people sign up for this is to learn rally driving, and the bits covering all the logistics of entering a performance rally are interesting but secondary. However, the CRS/NASA/RA/(SCCA)/etc still needs to have a school where all the performance rally stuff is taught. Furthermore, the school needs to remain inexpensive, which means limiting it to one day. However, I think we can break them up into two separate events.

I am taking notes, though, and will post back here with some of my ideas after I talk more with Mike and Paula.

 

Too bad I was late in getting to this, but it's already been said. I'll just weigh in to agree - I took the school last year, and while nice to get the intro to performance rallying, I was expecting more seat time/hands on instruction. Thought it would be easier than a trip to england (and a few $K) for a driving school!
Anyway - I decided against attending this year's for exactly the reasons already stated above. Now, had there been more seat time, my saturday would have definitely been spent differently!

 

If you have any suggestions, consider this an open thread. I'm still watching it and taking notes.

 

Which is pointless because even without a course walk and parade lap, after the first run you'd remember the course anyway and the co-driver is just penalty weight at that point.

 

Not if you really want to get into performance rally- think about it, would you rather have your co-driver make his first bad call- "right- oops I mean left" while you're tooling around a rallyx course where you as the driver know where your going already? or would you rather have that happen at high speed on a single lane road clinging to a mountainside where the consequences might be a 1500 ft roll down the mountain?

For some people these events are the only practice or shakedown they get before they enter full on rally races.

It really comes down to where your goals are, if you only worry about winning the Rally-X then your point is valid, but there are other reasons to do this stuff, not everyone has their eyes on the RallyX trophy.

 

So, my idea is to split this up into two one-day schools. The first is a prerequisite for the second, and is strictly a driving school. There's an hour introductory session, and then we go out to the skidpads and work, then more chalktalk, then more skidpad work, and some figure-8 work, then more chalktalk, then the sequence-of-turns. The day finishes with a non-competitive rallycross with instructors riding along. You'd be timed, so you could compare your own runs, but there'd be no overall compendium of times posted.

The second school would be on a different weekend. It'd start out with about 4-5 hours of classroom time, covering much of what's currently covered, but without the driving stuff - maybe only a brief review. The afternoon is spent in a "mini-rally", with real time cards. There's a transit out to a rallycross, you run the rally cross, there's a meandering half-hour transit around the area, then you come back and run the rallycross again (maybe backwards), then there's a transit back to the classroom, where you turn in your timecards. This second classroom session is a short "ok, so what issues did you have?" session, and then you get new timecards (so it mimicks a service), and go back out. Another transit back out to the rallycross (which the rallycross crew has regraded, or perhaps rearranged), another meandering road transit, another run through the rallycross, and a transit back to the classroom for pizza.

This would give people a real feel for what a rally is like, and real-world experience with timecard management, as well as how MTCs, ATCs, and FTCs work. The only problems I can see are getting a proper codriver-to-driver ratio, and that people'd be using their street cars so they'd have to use the street odometer.

As for notes...I'm not sure how useful they'd be in a rallycross. In the scenario for the second school I mentioned above, they might be because you'd never be running the same rallycross course twice, and wouldn't have a chance to see it ahead of time. Also, the course would probably be set up to be a little less tricky, and with a lot of cones, so there'd be little risk of getting lost. In a normal rallycross, you get to examine the track and walk it and should have it memorized by the time you run it.

On a stage, the biggest problems I have with notes are in 1) recognition, and 2) timing. Recognition can be difficult at times; for example if you have a "R5+lg 30 R4" (a long right five-plus, then 30 yards later, a right 4), you can sometimes be left wondering "ok, so...where does the 30 yards start? It looks tighter up ahead, but is that still part of this turn, or is that the R4?". Kinks followed by a 6 also can be difficult to pick up. Stuff like this can't be taught on a rallycross course - part of it just requires practice, and part of it is just getting used to the style of whoever wrote the notes.

The other issue is timing...when do you make the call? This varies from driver to driver, from car to car, and can vary depending on how fast you're going through a particular section of a stage.

 

sign us up

JOhn and Crystal

 

Thats an interesting idea hoche, but also pretty ambitious...
Sounds like alot of time will be spent w/ the extra course setups, 'mini rally' logistics, etc, all while still maintaining a full season rally-x calendar. Will you guys be up for it?

I like the idea personally. Even the mini rally is appealing because it gives me more time to throw the car around between events (practice always helps) but also sounds like two good opportunities for learning...