- So for the slalom exercise, our goal is very similar to what we were just doing in the
figure eight, that was our low speed weight transfer, now this is a high speed weight
transfer so instead of a big long corner and then a big long corner, you just have a
series of really quick corners in a high speed run.
So same thing as our straight line braking, we're going to be in second gear.
For these it's really just two inputs, it's turn and brake.
The key thing about, or I should say the difficult thing about it is your turn and
brake goes from being two inputs to six very quickly because your turn
is when do you turn, your timing, how much do you turn, your angle and how long
do you hold is which is your duration.
So you have your timing, angle and duration for your steering and for your
brakes, same thing you have timing, when do you squeeze them, you have
pressure, how hard do you squeeze them and duration, how long do you hold them.
So that's six inputs out of those two.
So most important thing to understand about this I would say is that you never get it right.
No matter what, you never get the corner perfect, so you're always compensating for the
previous corner.
So never come through a corner and go man that felt great, select, alt, copy paste
'cause that's the common thing that people want to do is they go wow that felt great
and they want to use the same amount of pressure and the same steering for
all the rest of the corner.
- It's always about that constant compensation for the current situation.
- Exactly you're always adapting and again one of the key differences between rallying and
a road course is on a road course the number one variable you have is the tyre degradation.
And depending on the tyre and how much time you've spent you'll probably have a pretty
good idea of what that's tyre's going to do and how it's going to handle.
On a rally stage it's going to be very different, depending on the weather you're going to have
either the loose gravel being swept off and you're getting to the hard pack dirt,
which is most common for us here.
Or it's wet, you're going to have a greasy surface that's going to start to rut and then
get even greasier and sloshier and muddier, you may get more dust, you may get less
dust it's just going to totally depend on the conditions but the most important thing
is that you do know for sure that you'll never see the same corner twice.
Even on this slalom, because when we finish with a class we'll come back and grade it,
the whole entire course will change, the profile of the crown, the bumps, the moisture
content, the rocks, and then the same thing with the tyres.
The tyres wear on a rally car, the square tread block, the very sharp edge is what
gives a rally tyre a tonne of that side wall bite, every corner you go through it
radiuses that edge off and so the tyre obviously the grip wears accordingly.
So again, just remembering coming into each of these corners, your turn and brake
is always going to be adapted a little bit.
Like we said on the figure eight it's turn and then brake.
So for this one, I'm going to say brake and hold, off the brake, brake and hold.
Normally again I would start you in a front wheel drive car because you'd get a lot more
of that weight transfer, but we're going to keep you in the big gun here so it's going
to be a little bit of extra work, you'll really have to pitch it in to get the car to kind of
rotate but let's see what she's got, I'll talk you through it as we go.
Alright good eyes up, first gear shift to second, so staying to the left of this
first cone, so eyes two cones ahead.
You should be looking at the next matching cone.
Try and be consistent with that throttle and turn, brake and hold, off the brake.
Brake and hold, off the brake.
And brake and hold.
Good so...
- That was a disaster.
- First lap usually is.
So eyes up, looking through these cones, so staying to the left of that first
pointer cone.
So looking two cones ahead always, so you've got this one, this one,
look to the next cone then match it, good.
So brake and hold, off the brake, brake and hold, off the brake,
brake and hold, off the brake, good.
- That felt better.
- Yeah it'll take a little while.
So again I'm going to be a little bit more mindful on the brakes this time so stay to
the left of this first cone.
And turn, brake and hold, off the brake, turn, brake and hold.
So notice that you're getting a little too much brake and so it's just pushing.
So just be a little gentler with that brake.
You're just trying to add enough brake to get the back to rotate essentially.
- Yeah OK that's just understeer, bit too much brake.
- Yeah and this, it does tend to understeer a little bit, obviously every car's a little
different so again just make sure that you get a decent amount of turn in.
You can kind of get the car to rotate just with steering so try on this second cone
here, turn in and then brake.
There you go, that's what we want, exactly like that, perfect.
Little less brake, there beautiful.
And turn, brake and hold.
Nice work, good.
So stay to the right this time, that way you'll have this first cone all set up.
Same thing, looking up through the corner like we practiced on straight line braking,
nice and tidy, unwind the wheel, accelerate up to that first cone, carry some speed
and turn brake and hold, off the brake, good, brake and hold, off the brake,
woah eyes up, there you go, tidy it back up, good.
Same thing, staying to the left here.
Good so eyes up through the corner.
Steering looks really good, much tidier, again rely on the brakes more than the
steering, start to unwind nice and early.
Staying to the right side, nice big slide, turn, brake and hold, off the brake, brake
and hold, off the brake, brake and hold, off the brake and brake and hold.
Good so you notice that when you hit that mud there, that's where you're getting that
understeer and that's again, the thing in rallying is you're going to have so many
different surfaces, even on this one runway there's three or four different textures.
Good same thing, nice and tidy, eyes up through the corner, good and just
planning ahead for that mud now that you know it's there.
Nice work.
Good eyes up through the corner, looking up through the exit.
Good accelerating, perfect that was a great exit.
So staying to the right of this cone and turn brake and hold.
Off the brake, brake and hold, off the brake, looking two cones up,
should be looking all the way through to the exit now.
So now eyes up to the right side of the course just keeping your eyes up there,
as you approach you're starting to look up through the corner, over that mirror.
Straighten that wheel up now, good on the gas.
Then looking two cones ahead..
So looking at the fourth cone, looking at the fifth cone, looking at that last cone down there.
Good and then looking all the way through that corner now up to the left, good looking all
the way down here, turn, brake, looking up through the grass, looking for your exit
point up here, eyes up on that first cone.
Now eyes up on the second cone so we're ignoring that first one, now eyes up on
the fourth cone, eyes on the fifth cone.
Eyes on the last cone, eyes all the way through to your finish gate.
Up at that banner, looking into that first corner.
Good nice and easy in.
Nice and tidy, eyes up, unwind the wheel, so we can get one more run out of the way.
There you go, good eyes up, two cones up, nice, good work in the mud section.
Looking tidy with your hands, just the right amount of shuffle.
Good you can hold that slide all the way into this corner, nice work.
You notice as you start to pick your eyes up, the whole thing becomes more fluid.
So first cone, second cone, fourth cone, fifth cone, last cone and through to the finish.
Good and across the line, there it is, brilliant work, alright let's cruise it
through, do a nice cool down lap.
Nice driving man.
- Thanks man.
- What do you think, you a rally driver yet?
- Yeah bro I'm into it.
That's a lot of fun.
- It is pretty silly.
And this car is just a 2.5 naturally aspirated, so this car...
- You can feel the lack of power coming out of those last corners.
- Well and that's the key, I get, obviously for people who want something
that's just an experience, there are schools that you can go to that'll put you directly
into a turbo all wheel drive rally car with the active centre differential and it'll do
a lot of the work for you and so you'll come out of a corner like that and you'll
be like, I'm a golden god.
For me I just don't believe that putting new drivers in fast cars is how you do
driver development.
So I'm a firm believer that you put people in cars that aren't...
- Get the fundamentals first and then add power.
- They're not going to, I mean this car is not going to hide your mistake.
I always tell people if you come out of a corner in a Honda Civic and you look fast,
I promise it's not the car.
So and same thing for this, I think you can tell, your first couple of corners,
coming out of those teardrops at the turn arounds, they were like sort of lack lustre,
you could feel it bog down as you got it going, looked great.
- Alright we've finished the slalom test there, pretty happy with how it all went,
how do you think I did?
- Yeah we're good I mean again everyone's in one piece, you zigged and you zagged,
left, right back and forth, got the car sideways.
Checked all the boxes man.
- So a few challenges that were really obvious for me from the driver's seat
and again trying to reprogram my circuit racing brain is moving the steering wheel
through my hands so we saw that through the figure eight, we saw that through the
constant speed circle but just trying to bring that into the slalom actually took me
a little bit to get used to.
So when you're only limiting your lock as you would in a circuit car, really limited
how sideways I could get the car and as soon as you kind of told me to start shuffling
the hands, that's when it all sort of clicked and the car was a lot more loose and it was
a hell of a lot more fun too.
- Yeah and I mean that's the hardest thing for everyone but especially folks who have had
their experience in motorsport is they come in and there's sort of a little bit of an unlearn
or a reprogram that you have to do just to get to a baseline.
And so absolutely understanding that you want to be as tidy as possible, obviously as much
steering as you put in, that's how much you have to take back out and go the other
direction so you never want to use more than you need but often times you just
need more than you can get with those traditional circuit racing hands.
And so one of the most common things you'll see is exactly as you were sort of
getting stuck on is you start to cross up and I've had people before, they get to here
and they're like well can't go any further and they start to add their whole body into it,
it's like a yoga class so I think it was obvious to see when you got to that point
and you went oh yeah we learned that shuffle earlier and you added that shuffle
in and just even a quarter or a half turn more wheel, not only does it allow the car
to rotate more, but it also allows you to add as much as you need and not
worry about oh gees I'm running out of wheel here.
So obviously every car's going to be different, even from the Honda back to the Subaru,
totally different steering, totally different dynamics and so to me I think what
makes a really good racing driver isn't knowing how to drive one car on one track,
but it's understanding each car is going to be a little bit different so even from Subaru
to Subaru you're going to have totally different steering feel and adding and taking away as
much steering as you need and being able to react to the car dynamically,
that's what makes a rally driver.
- Now there's a couple of other aspects to this little test as well, one is that the track,
the slalom track that we've just gone down Is not consistent, you've got a really wet
area down one side of the track sort of just for a couple of those cones so really
obvious from the driver's seat just how much the surface change and the amount of grip
available affects how much the car moves around which is what you've sort of been
saying basically the whole way through this series of lessons is just adapting the car
to the surface and the amount of available grip.
The other thing that I think is really important to mention here is regardless if you've got
no intention of ever being a competitive rally driver, and that's probably about
where I'm at in my life right now, I think these skills really are going
to cross over quite nicely to the circuit so obviously on the racetrack we're not
intending to be sideways but loose conditions, maybe it's wet, it does happen
and I think the skills that I've learned here today, being able to catch a slide,
anticipating the slide and being more in control, I think that's going to cross over
really well to circuit and hey, maybe even the road as well if something goes
pear shaped.
- Yeah absolutely I mean I think for young drivers who are getting behind the wheel
for the first time, this kind of stuff, it's sort of like offensive driving right.
We have defensive driving and offensive driving, it's understanding and being able
to drive the car.
What often happens when people approach the limit or they go beyond the limit
unexpectedly, all of a sudden the car is driving them.
And so when you're on a course, on a racetrack and you're really confident and
you're keeping the car right on that knife edge and things go south, a lot of times
people just freeze up and then they're along for the ride and so what rally
driving is is it's really making sure that when the car tries to drive you,
you sort of retain that control so whether you're a new driver, whether you're a
circuit racer, whether you're a rally driver, or whether this is just something that you
want to use to add to your driving on the road skills, it's always applicable and it's
always good to have these things like we said sort of in your driver's tool kit.
And I think yeah for you, I think you might sell yourself short and you've got a lot of
really good gravel roads back home in New Zealand, so I would be very bummed
if you didn't apply these and become a rally driver.
- It's possible that I can see a rally project car somewhere in RaceCraft's not too
distant future, we'll see how that all pans out.
So while obviously we've come here to Texas to learn these skills at Dave's
Rally Ranch, the lessons in this free series are going to give you a lot of information,
all for free on the internet, however at some point you do need to apply this
in a practical sense.
So if you do want to take your rally knowledge and your skillset to that
next level, a facility like Dave's is the perfect place to head.
You're going to get that one on one training and really get to perfect that
skillset, put it to practice in the real world so Dave if people do want to
travel to Austin, it's a beautiful spot, how can they reach out?
- Yeah come see us, rallyready.com, basically all of the contact information
will come to me or one of two other people.
Any questions you have about rallying, about any form of motorsport at all,
feel free to reach out, we'll be happy to point you towards any resources,
whether it's driving, building the car, and even if you're not here or you're far
far away in another part of the world, we're more than happy to share resources
and help you find other folks and other facilities that can help you with your training.
- Perfect, thanks heaps for the experience Dave, I won't forget it.
- Good work.
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