February 11, 2008 - Rally school!
Janel and I travelled to Ridgecrest, California for the California Rally Series school on Saturday. This allows us to earn NASA Rally licenses for the Targa as well as teaching us, well, how to be a rally team.
The school's been on for around 12 years or so, and most of the bugs have been worked out. The day started off with a lot of classroom work, covering the basics such as classification, license types and how the heck to get involved. Then we moved on to basic timing and scoring - including a little rally run around the hotel. This is the area that Janel and I really need practice on, and it gave us a good idea of what to expect.
The section on course following and safety was unfortunately given by someone unfamiliar with the material, and she ran over time so some of the most useful sections were glossed over very quickly. We'll go back and spend some time with the workbook that was given to each of us. Still, it gave both Janel and I an idea of how the in-car interaction will work. That's the part we need to practice the most.
Around 2:30, the class split up. The drivers headed for a rallycross course. Now, I'm going to be racing a rear wheel drive 5-speed Miata on tarmac roads with racing tires. So the obvious way to practice for that is by driving a front wheel drive automatic family sedan in mud, isn't it? Okay, maybe not. And maybe I didn't pick up a lot of useful tips in the driving practice because of it and because I have more experience behind the wheel in extremis than some of my classmates. But I did have a lot of fun, and I can definitely not recommend you buy a used rental car. You might get mine.
Meanwhile, as I was throwing mud onto the roof of our respectable sedan and left-foot braking until the car reeked of cooking brake pad, Janel was working hard. She has a good idea now of just how much preparation she's going to have to do each night during the rally. Codriving isn't just about being a lump of ballast as some nutcase tries to get you both killed, it's about preparation and being able to juggle dozens of inputs under fairly stressful conditions. And that's the sort of thing that she does very well. While she's not excited about the amount of work that will have to be done during the event, she's now asking the sort of questions I love to hear - questions about regulations, timing controls and the capabilities of our rally computer. She was disappointed in her practical training during the school, but she's got what she needs to get started. Being a rally fan helped out a lot and she knows a lot more about driving than her classmates.
Overall, a decent school. Both of us would have preferred a higher level of instruction - perhaps by splitting the two groups apart earlier in the day - but we now know enough to learn the rest on our own. If we can find a TSD in our area, that would be ideal.
tags: testing, other cars, skills |
THE DIARY