With 400HP, rally tires, and great drivers like Pete and Marek behind the wheel... that car is a menace! And now Pete has the hydraulic ebrake installed... I'm so jealous.

My excuse will be the multiple reruns I had to take - sooner or later I'll blow a turn, and sure enough. It was a fun track though. I was worried it be pretty short looking at the satalite photos, but it worked out well.

 

Pete is also a very good sportsman (like a number of rallyx'ers) and always seems to be egging on his competitors with words of encouragement.

Hydraulic eBrake? Now I'm jealous too.

 

3rd time out, first time with my race map

 

pictures: https://www.i-club.com/forums/showth...34#post1611734

 

When creating the course, we look to add a lot of diversity to it. It's good to have fun places and tricky places and as a course designer, it warms the heart when you hear people in the grid (or on the forums) saying "oh, I loved this bit", "that 5th turn got me every time", "I nailed that sweeper", etc.

We don't often design a course with a plan on how to drive it as a whole, but the individual elements are often designed that way.

1. tight - drive your lines, sliding will only slow you down. Because you're fast out of the gate there's a chance to hit cones here as many people (including myself) did. Drive the racing lines and it's fastest, especially when exiting the second cone. Speed here will carry you quickly into:

2. the sweeper - drift it yo. This was built for skylar. 'nuff said.

3. this actually got moved after the course was originally created. I used my handbrake, but for most people the flick would work well. Pitching the car before the turn should get it pointed in the right direction and hopefully hookup by the time you've cleared the cone.

4. we tried to make this pretty round and consistent making it ideal to left foot brake. That was my strategy and it kept me way inside where the traction was.

5. same as 3 really. On paper this was a tight hairpin but it ended up being much more open. the way the course was it enabled you to swing wide way before the turn if you wanted to so you'd carry more speed into:

6. it didn't look so much like the drawing, more of just a "zag" left after the "zig" of #5. stay inside here and get the grip. This comes into a wiggle where if you're lined up out of the left hander then the cones just seem to moveout of your way to power through this. Another great thing here is there were't any outside cones so you could go way wide and just take a racing line (late apex)

7. I used the gas pedal to deftly navigate this straight

8. small loop with a point - the trick here is making it around that peak without almost plowing into the cone on the other side. you can snap it as best you're able or late apex it, either would be fast.

9. I think a quick steering rack would help here. Failing that, front LSD will pull the car though. This last bit was much tighter than designed and really required frantic steering to make it though fast. I jacked up my finger in the steering wheel on my third run and never quite mastered the end here. With extra oversteer it might have helped.

It was a fun course and much longer than we thought we'd be able to make here. I did the whole thing in 1st in my STi. My fastest time was 1.19 but I'm sure there was a 1.17 in there at least. The key to going fast for me was traction. During the parade lap I payed close attention to where the hard stuff was I could grip and where the soft stuff was that I should avoid. Many people were going wide so cutting tight inside the turns was vital to hold the traction.

 

Well then, here's something to warm your heart:

Ripping from 2 and getting into 3... I perfomed my FIRST EVAR (successful) SCANDANAVIAN FLICK AND POPPED MY DORIFUTO CHERRY HERE; thanks to the course practically handholding me into it. And then I did it again for 5.

Big thankyou for that!

This will forever go down in my personal memory as "when I first did it".

(oh... and I'm dissecting your hints too)

 

Thanks for the nice comments guys. It's the people that make RallyX the fun, inclusive sport that it is. Big thanks to Tam who organized the event and Skylar & Megan who've kept the program running for the past couple years. I just wanted to add that SFR RallyX isn't an exclusive club and anyone is welcome to help out with the events in whatever capcaity they want. The first people I met in RallyX were Skylar & Megan. After being impressed with the friendliness of everyone I started help to clean up afterwards, setting up beforehand and even instructing at the Rally School. Anyway, that's the long way around to: get involved!

With regards to speed and power and such. With great power comes great responsibility, which is exactly why I drove straight through the first two cones on my first run... just like Marek. I would urge anyone who wants to be a pro to talk to Michele Hoche-Mong ('hoche). I was a middle of the pack finisher for my first couple season, but after about 5 minutes on the skidpad with him it totally changed my dirt driving. Also, talk to Brent Blakely and find out why he is absolutely amazing. I fear the day he gets rally tires.

 

BTW, I've been wary of just how good "magnetic numbers are". And at Antioch, I saw a dudes big magnetic red circle #6 go flying off section the first sweeper... Looks like it's ghetto tape or vinyl numbers for me.

 

Say it ain't so!

magnetic numbers > tape numbers (vinyl are single-use unless you leave them on)

I saw people losing thier numbers also, but thankfully, neither of mine fell off. I was concerned about their grip before I used them, but I've never had a problem. I even picked out numbers for track days with maximum magnetic surface area (809) so theorically they could hold on better. I've never lost any at the track either.

Magnetic sheeting is pretty inexpensive also- and easy to cut. I got mine at Tap Plastic for like $10 and had plenty of material.

 

That's a great tip. Thanks!

 

More pics from Antioch: http://www.nepthys.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=25

 

man, next event I go to I'm gonna have to hunt out the photogrpahers before hand and pay them to get pictures of me! theres never many

greats photos though guys

 

i'll gladly take some money.

 

cool, how does $10,000 in monopoly monies sound?

 

Hit me up next time and I'll shoot a bunch. My Canon Powershot won't be magazine quality like JZ but you'd still have something to look at. Megan should have a digital SLR in her future though (she used to do a lot of photography) so at some point we'll have some high quality stuff.

- Skylar