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Racinkid13
I signed up for recce. I already planned for the whole week off. So no harm there, but thats a whole week vac i took that i cant take some other time. will it be worth it? hell yeah. The only worry i have is the only other vehicle i have to use for recce is my Dodge. It aint small.

Is there a spot where you can go and find a road that you can 'close off' and practice? Done with some friends with some care this will get you seat time... Help you with what is going to fall off of the car ect so that when you enter the race you hopefully won't be a DNF at the second turn for the red mist.

Practice practice practice.......

Recheck the car...... EVERYTHING about it. Every fastener, exhaust hanger, suspension mounting point, ect ect... It will ALL be loose.

Go practice again..... Don't join the 'Happy Club.'

Who wants to let this lad in on what it takes to join the 'Happy Club?'

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JohnLane

Overkill is consistently more fun

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john vanlandingham

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Racinkid13
I signed up for recce. I already planned for the whole week off. So no harm there, but thats a whole week vac i took that i cant take some other time. will it be worth it? hell yeah. The only worry i have is the only other vehicle i have to use for recce is my Dodge. It aint small.

Max, first event, you don't need recce. You need practice and vehicle shake down.

And that folks is the major problem with all this talk.
Total beginners wasting time with bullshit rather than getting the vehicle ready 100% AND driving so when they spend big money to go race, they go race.

I learned that racing Enduro and hare scrambles. Bike prep is really important, talking about bike prep is not all that effective.

I'm hoping to race a car at BRS this fall, its been almost 10 years since I've done it. Any words of wisdom? I can get the helmet cam video for all the stages (ghetto recce) or I can just wing it and drive what I can see just like a rallymoto.
Rallysolo seems like a logical choice for me considering I've been doing it for 6 years without a navi and seem to do just fine.
I'm hoping to rent a V8 powered A4 from a friend, which should be fun. No turbo, no intercooler and plenty of grunt for the smile factor!

Being a new rally driver I have just participated in in Prescott rally 2012 with notes and recce and then recently High desert trails as a blind rally with notes ( both notes sets written by Mike G.)

Honestly i was terrified my first rally at prescott and was happy to do recce adding a few !!!!! to sharp corners that stared off into the abyss. It was also great to hear the notes and look at the turns. As new driver I don't think you can hear notes enough, sometimes I call them outloud to myself as i am cruising down twisty dirt roads in my truck. The recce eased my mind at least a little bit.
At first at HDT I was worried about not doing recce. Obviously I had never driven the roads before so turn by turn it was all new to me. This actually made quite it exciting and I had to have extra focus as a driver and TRUST in my codriver and the notes provided. It was a blast. I hit the brakes early ran conservatively (sort of). In the end I think non-recce (note provided) events will make a more experienced driver, a better driver. As newb I just need to spend more time behind the wheel and even recce counts towards that experience as you visualize how you will attack the SS. Never realized there was such a debate about it. Just figured different events had different flavors and you took time off according to how it was set up.
Recce or not has little to do with me choosing a rally, for me the closer the better. Just a novice competitor view point.

James, you have a pretty good attitude and perspective (so we'll have to ban you from the website). The biggest issue with recce , for me, is when competitors decide the won't run events without it (or with it). We got asked a lot on DooWops to provide notes or recce. It was always denied. Ray wanted to keep the event true to the sports roots. I suspect with all the video online and the same fomat year after year most everyone knew the roads anyway.

For me the downside to denying recce or notes was it put our guys a wee bit behind , experience wise, on the RA events that did offer notes and recce. So its a damned if ya do and damned if ya don't deal.

Having never run notes or recce I have 2 questions. Can you accurately determine max rally speed when viewing a road at 30mph? Notes...a 6 for Higgins and a 6 for me are worlds apart. How does a co-driver adjust to being in different cars with different drivers calling notes?

Back in the day we made notes in the route book the first time thru a stage. Usually it was marking nasty stuff. At some point we woke up and quit marking nasty stuff and started marking fast stuff. Everybody marked nasty stuff and you tend to slow down the second run thru because of that. When we quit that we consistently ran for the overall win.

Gene you are correct.

I doubt 99% of the drivers could determine their Max Speed. As was mention earlier in this, or another thread...Most guys are averaging 45 mph on a stage. Why waste a day and $200.00 + on recce?
John Buffum won a Shit Load of events running blind. Why? He had road racing experience and knew how to read a road / corner.
I bet if most rally drivers spent $200.00 for a day at their local HPD events they'd kick ass on their next event.
Even though I'm a Co-Driver, I raced Formula Fords for 10 years, and was a race instructor. I think if I drove any rally I'd end up in the top 5 based on my road racing ability. Just sayin'.

Sean Gallagher

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2WD...Less Traction More Action!

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stgallagher
Gene you are correct.

I doubt 99% of the drivers could determine their Max Speed. As was mention earlier in this, or another thread...Most guys are averaging 45 mph on a stage. Why waste a day and $200.00 + on recce?
John Buffum won a Shit Load of events running blind. Why? He had road racing experience and knew how to read a road / corner.
I bet if most rally drivers spent $200.00 for a day at their local HPD events they'd kick ass on their next event.
Even though I'm a Co-Driver, I raced Formula Fords for 10 years, and was a race instructor. I think if I drove any rally I'd end up in the top 5 based on my road racing ability. Just sayin'.

Sean Gallagher

hang on, just a detail here... And before I do let me say a major reason I push the vehicles I push is because I point out that with a decent rwd 2300 turbo car optimised for rally will ALSO be a "ptreey fun" car to go out and play driftosis, or when the poor bastids of the Alfa club have track days, a guy can go play on tracks and get a little introduction to higher speeds and what the car feels like and how the brakes work, and should they think the full day spent for 5-6 minutes driving around smoosh cones in a decent trade-off and there's nothing else to do, they can go smoosh cones--and in all these, have some cheap fun....
Because above all its time in the rally car doing stupid stuff in a safe environment...

And lord knows everybody needs more time in the cars..

But I take large issue attributing Buffums successes here to some playing around at road racing a little bit.

It's part of the same annoyance at the children here blabbering about the Aussies kicking ass "because they are a natural talent"...

Your suggestion discounts Buffums YEARS of experience and bazzilions of miles driving on loose surfaces===which is mainly what we do here. Years going back into the late 1960s. It takes years to develop that muscle memory thing, what some call "natural" reflexes which are anything but natural, but trained...and 30 minutes /day doing 8-9 turns over and over* at a few races vs 7 hours or 5 hours SS times in the old days over 3 days is something else again.

So yeah there are some insights to be gained playing around at track days or road racing, but we get REAL good at those things we spend thousands of hour at, and that takes time doing the specific thing


*says the guy who spent sometimes up to 15-20 hours a week going round tracks with 20-30 turns--and some jumps and ruts and off cambers for 20 years. Not knocking track time but what it teaches is shaving fractions off, what 99% need is avoiding gross egregious blunders, and putting gross egregious blunders behind them so they don't fuck up the subsequent turns, and the event as a whole..and biggest blunder consistently I see from oh say 1967 till now is fixation with motors and that at the cost of never learning to use brakes effectively--brakes being the most powerful system on the vehicle...

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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stgallagher
Gene you are correct.

I doubt 99% of the drivers could determine their Max Speed. As was mention earlier in this, or another thread...Most guys are averaging 45 mph on a stage. Why waste a day and $200.00 + on recce?
John Buffum won a Shit Load of events running blind. Why? He had road racing experience and knew how to read a road / corner.
I bet if most rally drivers spent $200.00 for a day at their local HPD events they'd kick ass on their next event.
Even though I'm a Co-Driver, I raced Formula Fords for 10 years, and was a race instructor. I think if I drove any rally I'd end up in the top 5 based on my road racing ability. Just sayin'.

Sean Gallagher

I've done two HPDs dont think they offered much in terms of rally. HPDs focus on lines and apexes. Yeah there's feeling out the car and breaking points which you need to do in rally but its completely different.

I'm not fast I'm in that low average speed, but I have no problem driving 100+ on gravel roads in a straight line. It's slowing down to a L2 at the end of it, on a track there's a nice run off zone with nice consistent grip in almost every corner. In rally its a hillside into a forrest. So I'm a lot less likely to find the limit like I would be on a road track.

Top 5 in any rally without ever driving once, must hold a high opinion of yourself. Maybe the small rallys where there's 15 entries and none of the big guys come play, but any rally?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2013 06:52AM by czwalga.

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czwalga

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stgallagher
Gene you are correct.

I doubt 99% of the drivers could determine their Max Speed. As was mention earlier in this, or another thread...Most guys are averaging 45 mph on a stage. Why waste a day and $200.00 + on recce?
John Buffum won a Shit Load of events running blind. Why? He had road racing experience and knew how to read a road / corner.
I bet if most rally drivers spent $200.00 for a day at their local HPD events they'd kick ass on their next event.
Even though I'm a Co-Driver, I raced Formula Fords for 10 years, and was a race instructor. I think if I drove any rally I'd end up in the top 5 based on my road racing ability. Just sayin'.

Sean Gallagher

I've done two HPDs dont think they offered much in terms of rally. HPDs focus on lines and apexes. Yeah there's feeling out the car and breaking points which you need to do in rally but its completely different.

I'm not fast I'm in that low average speed, but I have no problem driving 100+ on gravel roads in a straight line. It's slowing down to a L2 at the end of it, on a track there's a nice run off zone with nice consistent grip in almost every corner. In rally its a hillside into a forrest. So I'm a lot less likely to find the limit like I would be on a road track.

Top 5 in any rally without ever driving once, must hold a high opinion of yourself. Maybe the small rallys where there's 15 entries and none of the big guys come play, but any rally?

Excellent points. The main difference is exactly that---grip is a given and tracks are simple, and usually have excellent visibility...and third---most people drive the tracks they do hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of laps often for years and years....and learn to ---eventually---shave those little onion skin thick little incremental improvements.

Christian Loriaux said famously about the difference between the "problem" in gravel and asphalt "On gravel we are searching for grip, on tarmac, handling..."


In the end, there's no substitute for those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles piled up over yeras---to be good AND relatively fast....and those are two separate things.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

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stgallagher
I raced Formula Fords for 10 years, and was a race instructor. I think if I drove any rally I'd end up in the top 5 based on my road racing ability. Just sayin'.

A number of times we've seen 'Hot Shoes' who spoke as you've pounded out on the keyboard who went wayyyyyy off on the first or second turn.....

Try racing on gravel.... It is much different than the roadcourse....

You will be learning to walk again. It is worth the effort.

---

JohnLane

Overkill is consistently more fun

Gene sometimes I do feel like I have too much wide eyed enthusiams to be on this site LOL! but to answer your questons
"Can you accurately determine max rally speed when viewing a road at 30mph?" No I can't. I don't have nearly enough experience. Can anybody know this but the VERY experienced? It's fine line between sliding off the road and hitting maximum speed in a corner. Recce does however give me chance to feel what the road surface is like. Is it a fresh layer ABC gravel which is spinny like ball bearings or is it decomposed granite which has remarkable grip? In prescott the road typed changed dramatically depending on your elevation. At best I can estimate my comfort level with the grip and recce is handy for this. For HDT I did feel that the previous years competitors had an advantage but only on the first run through. I didn't complain at all I know I need to get better in all aspects of rally. Tarmac is entirely different and though small variations exhist in its surface it is not nearly as dynamic as gravel/dirt/snow.

"Notes...a 6 for Higgins and a 6 for me are worlds apart. How does a co-driver adjust to being in different cars with different drivers calling notes?" Couldn't really comment this. But being new does have some advantage in that I was not set in my ways interms of how I would grade corner. So I essentially have learned Mikes version and don't know differently. It's easy to see how recce would be of benifit to very experienced driver like Higgins who might mark R5 to R6 etc. becasue of the greater comfort level. As far as i know Mike uses a Jemba and then distills them into something more user friendly.
It's easy to see why someone has done HDT 3-4 times would have no interest in recce at all. I noticed Mendocino has an optional recce which seems like a good compromise. As long as people who choose not to do it don't complain that those who did participate had an advantage. In the end I do realize that this all clubman level racing and enjoy the experience of pushing myself and learning the craft.

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heymagic
Notes...a 6 for Higgins and a 6 for me are worlds apart. How does a co-driver adjust to being in different cars with different drivers calling notes?

That is supposed to be the advantage of jemba, especially for the co-driver. If the book says 6, I call 6 (BUT, I normally ride with a driver that does not make many changes to the jemba notes on 1-pass recce). The bigger part of co-driving for different drivers is timing based on their overall speed. I find jemba at east coast events to be pretty consistent on distances between instructions and I know 100 yards coming out of a R6 is going to go by a lot faster than 100 yards coming out of a R2. It does take a few events to figure out where you need to pause so you don't get too far ahead and where you need to just keep your darn head down and keep reading.

My normal driver wants me chattering in his ear the whole time, no silence, so we also call a lot of repeats as we're approaching turns. There are other tricks you can do with voice inflection to get a driver's attention.

Maybe I'm not answering your original question as I'm sure there are some drivers out there that prefer vastly different styles of calling notes, but I haven't had an issue with anyone I've ridden with yet (other than my inexperience at first).

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12xalt
it's a multicolored riding crop thankyouverymuch

Merrilee: this I MUST see! But not because I did something naughty on recce.

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Mtngirl

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12xalt
it's a multicolored riding crop thankyouverymuch

Merrilee: this I MUST see! But not because I did something naughty on recce.

Wouldn't recce be more fun if you do something naughty?

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12xalt

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Mtngirl

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12xalt
it's a multicolored riding crop thankyouverymuch

Merrilee: this I MUST see! But not because I did something naughty on recce.

Wouldn't recce be more fun if you do something naughty?

Are you trying to get me in trouble with Gene?

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Mtngirl

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12xalt

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Mtngirl

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12xalt
it's a multicolored riding crop thankyouverymuch

Merrilee: this I MUST see! But not because I did something naughty on recce.

Wouldn't recce be more fun if you do something naughty?

Are you trying to get me in trouble with Gene?

I'm pretty sure Gene would also like it if you did something naughty.

However, better put your name and location in your profile before you get in trouble. Then I will have to bring my riding crop!