Hi, first time posting in this forum, I usually stay in the Gen2 section. Anyways;
(apologies for the cut&paste from my other posts in the Gen2 section)
Last weekend my dad and I competed in an overnight winter road-rally in my Grand Vitara, up in the Laurentian mountains. It was an AWESOME rally!!
It was my second road-rally in the GV and first big overnighter. I've done a few big overnighters before in my old cars. It had snowed that day so the roads were excellent, with nice big 6 foot high snowbanks in places; rough patches and frost heaves that utilized the bump stops at 50km/h (our stuff in the back was airborne a few times for sure), smooth long straights = 5th gear on snow/ice, and twisty-turny-blind cresty stuff that would rival the Swedish or Finnish WRC events. Coolest part of the night must've been passing by a blue Subaru WRX STi that had the big rally lights on the front, he made a wrong turn and was just coming back on route when we blew past. I kept a close eye on my rearviews and for a place to pull over because I knew he'd be pushing hard trying to make up for lost time, but suprizingly the gap between us seemed to steadily WIDEN for the first while, until we got to the twisty blind cresty stuff and he caught up and passed me. But it was neat that I was able to hold off a big 300hp Subaru for a while.
This was a road-rally, however, not an all-out performance rally. The idea is precision driving and timing, not all-out speed. Basically in the good sections, you're given an average speed (usually 10% below the posted speed limit) and you must hold that average the best you can. Sounds easy but on the really twisty stuff it can be a real challenge. (In fact some performance rally teams come out to these events to build teamwork and get more seat time in their rallycars. I've heard one of them say that these overnight winter road rallies are just as fun as the performance events, but without the high costs.) Every stop sign, turn, etc requires you to drive slightly faster to make up the time lost at the stop. Check out my little avatar gif there. A more accurate picture would be to take off the helmets, and give the navigator a calculator and pen in addition to the route notes, and have him scratching his head trying to do timing calculations all while bouncing around in the seat on the rough twisty roads. He basically has to tell me to (usually) speed up, slow down(sometimes), where to turn (that's important too).
There are checkpoints (CPs) hidden along the route that you must cross at the right time, if you don't you collect penalty points. Less is better. Most CPs have a one-minute window in which you can cross the line and not collect any points, but some only have a 6-second window.
I'm trying to upload some pics to photobucket, but it's not accepting any uploads today for some strange reason. It says "uploading" and the progress bar says 0% and it just sits there. I've tried several times through the past two days already. I've got one pic of me with the GV ready to head out on the rally, and a few other pics of some other rally cars in the parking lot before and after an event that I worked at (as a checkpoint crewman) in mid february.
In the meantime I found a couple videos on youtube from another competitor from the two events my dad and I did.
1000 Snowbanks Rally
(first event in the GV)
Criterium des Neiges
(the big overnighter mentioned way up at the top of this post.
Sorry that it's inside a Heep but it's the best I can do right now until photobucket starts working properly again. I don't know why it's not accepting my uploads.
James
