BRZ Rally Car

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

Did a whole bunch of tire mounting, since I had a bunch of cooked Hoosiers to take off, some MRFs from the big sale they ran for Black Friday, and a set of tractionized Blizzaks that Adam brought me:

The Blizzaks have been sitting for a LONG time but I'm hoping the weird, velcro-ey tractionizing magic still works:

So this means for Sno*Drift we'll have the set of unmodified Blizzaks we ran last year, a set of tractionized ones, and a set of cut Altimax Arctics in case things are by some miracle not icy at all.

Full tire rack makes me happy:

I need to build one of these...

Mostly packed.  Weather looks very questionable, we may have yet another all-ice event or it might be more worn down with dirt in places- full snow coverage isn't looking likely at this point.  Whatever happens we've hopefully got decent enough tires for it!

If you need roadside assistance or a pit stop around cleveland you have my number

In reply to Patrick :

Much appreciated!

Another thing, new ARA title sponsor means new required graphics package.  I'm really not a fan of the white windshield banner but at least we did a good job installing it:

Yikes; that's definitely not an improvement from the black banners.  Might look better on my white car.  And doesn't make sense from an advertising perspective, either--light green on white is basically impossible to see.  At least we don't have to buy them though?

In reply to Berck :

True, the update packages are free- they learned from last time.  I'm with you though, not sure why this color scheme was chosen, other than that it matches the Green APU team graphics (or at least the ones they ran last year):

Hey, check it out, some love from ARA!

Sno*Drift 2023

Towing and Recce

We got up and on the road ridiculously early to get out to Michigan- the tow was completely smooth and uneventful because this truck is wonderful.  12hrs of driving for me and relaxing for everyone else:

Up at the house we were sharing with teams Wicked Function (Dylan and Ben) and War Weasel (Dan and Nathan, although Nathan + crew got their own accomodations) and our crew of Cort, Sean, and Jonathan.  The garage was just big enough to wedge two cars in, although the homeowner later told us to move the UTV so it got a little bigger:

The next day we got out for some recce- at this event, due to the surface recce is pretty exciting and can be nearly race-pace in any vehicle that doesn't have snows on it.  The Tundra actually handles pretty well with all the nannies turned off, but there's no getting around the fact that it's over 3 tons on ATs so we were still sliding around a bit out there.  Dylan also taped my wheel without permission since he was horrified that I usually wing it and call corners by feel instead of steering angle- I'm still on the fence about whether this was an improvement but I will probably try it at the next event as well:

Early on in recce, things were a decently grippy blend of snow and dirt with a little ice here and there- but then it rained, eventually becoming snow.  The only thing we could really be sure of was that conditions would be highly variable in terms of grip, although we did note all of the already icy sections in case snow cover made it difficult to tell where they were later.  It sure was pretty out there after the snow came down, though!

Generally, it seemed like the Friday stages would have a little more grip in places, whereas the Saturday stages had a solid ice base underneath and would be very slippy anywhere that snow was absent.  There was also a monster hill with a tight turn at the bottom of it, which we knew would be a tough climb on Saturday night.  While we were out, the car passed tech right ahead of some blue thing:

We reviewed video that night and got some sleep for a little more recce before race time the next day.

Sno*Drift 2023

Friday

The only stage we hadn't covered the day before was Bonfire Alley, so we covered that in the truck first thing.  Conditions were beautiful, and we joked about trading the whole rally just for a chance to run that one while the snow was fresh... but we also passed a plow truck, so we knew it probably wasn't going to stay that way.  Back to the house for a little hanging out with the rally pups:

and before we knew it it was time to head off to Parc Expose to mill around in the cold and catch up with more rally friends:

Pretty soon it was off to SS1, Sage-Vondette, a relatively snowy mixed speed stage and overall a friendly one to start the rally with.  We had elected to run our regular Blizzaks, since this night would be 6 stages with no service and I had no idea how long the tractionized tires (ideal for ice) would last, and didn't trust the snow coverage enough to run the more snow/dirt biased Altimaxes.  This turned out to be a good choice, and we had a surprising amount of grip in a lot of places- it was a completely different world from last year, with real snow and different lines to play with instead of a skating rink everywhere, although the small and in some places nonexistent snowbanks certainly made things feel pretty high stakes as speeds were higher too.  We ran a midpack time for overall 2wd, but it was good enough to put us in the lead of regional L2wd.

SS2 was Blue Lake-Soden, and it was a little longer and a little faster than the first.  We pushed harder here, loving the snowier surface and achieving a higher top speed than any of last year's Sno*Drift, and only scared ourselves a tiny bit when we slid into a pretty icy R1 and nearly exited the road.  Our time was in about the same spot as the previous stage relative to the competition, and Dan and Nate appeared behind us in the War Weasel at the finish control, having passed Gabe's WRX that started behind us.

SS3 was Orchard-Shoreline, and as the name implies it dropped down to the lake and ran along the shore for much of the second half of the stage.  This one had a ton of grip, with exposed dirt in places, but we generally kept it dialed back a bit even in those spots in case the dirt ended partway around a corner- definitely missed out on some time here, but it was still a solid pace.  Near the end of the stage we encountered Dave Matheson's Talon off the side of the road- sorry guys, 2wd can't tow very well!  Dan and Nate also caught us near the end, really finding their pace in these conditions.

Back to a regroup, and checking times we were in a pretty decent spot- leading regional L2wd, about 1min out of regional overall 2wd lead, and about 2.5min behind Santiago who was running national L2wd but a good benchmark since he's got a BRZ and has run this event a bunch of times.  Those sound like big numbers but getting stuck is a very real possibility in a 2wd car at Sno*Drift and costs at least a minute or two.  Before the next loop started, we told Dan we'd switch in the next time control since he was clearly moving a lot faster than us in his Impreza.

Another loop of the same 3 stages- we did a routine switch in the ATC for SS4 to put Dan ahead of us, but the volunteers had trouble with the RallySafe and things got a bit delayed.  This was annoying, although ultimately solved with a couple inquiries and our times ended up being put back to what they should be with no penalties.  SS4 was icier than it had been earlier, but overall still reasonably grippy and I don't remember having any real issues.  We ran a little closer to the both the overall regional 2wd lead (held by the James') and Santiago, finding our pace a little more, but stayed in the same spot in the standings.

SS5 was icier still, and I think we had our first real bank bonk here- nothing crazy, just a little tap with the back end.  My technique for hitting snowbanks (when I had to) was pretty simple and mostly worked well- if we're coming in too hot, grab the handbrake and get the rear quarter to hit it first, hopefully meaning that we just smack off it and continue straight down the road rather than spearing into the bank and getting stuck, or spinning.  Unfortunately Coulter and Proseus weren't so lucky and plowed right through one of the banks toward the end, rolling off an embankment:

SS6, Orchard-Shoreline again, and we remembered this one being grippy thanks to the dirt... but with it fully dark out and temperatures dropping fast, we learned pretty quickly that the friendly dirt from earlier had become a slimy brown ice with maybe even less grip than regular ice.  This one felt a lot like last year, with the added bonus of a lake to fall into, so we kept it safe and tidy, passing a VERY stuck Santiago and Kassel off where Matheson had been stuck earlier- and in a great example of rally karma, Matheson actually was the one to yank them back onto the road, but it cost them 20 minutes and their BRZ an oil cooler so they moved way back in the standings.  Honestly I think we might have slid off in the same spot if they weren't sitting there as a warning, it was VERY slick.

Timecards in, and we were leading L2wd, and second regional 2wd after the James' O2wd VW.  Back to the house.

Our car was just fine after a quick check, so we swapped on the tractionized tires for the anticipated ice of the next day.  The War Weasel wasn't so lucky, having smooshed a control arm and done some minor body damage in a pretty hard hit on an icy 5 somewhere in the last stage:

A few bolts and some zipties and they were ready to go again.  Dylan and Ben had also had a bit of an excursion, spending 5min here before the spectators managed to dig them out and get them back on the road:

Sno*Drift 2023

Saturday

Another morning, another Parc Expose- but it was warming up fast so conditions would definitely be changing throughout the day.  The run order had changed a bit, and we had a new big friend behind us:

More milling around and catching up on stories from last night- pretty much everyone had a spin or at least a bit of a hit somewhere.  Nobody knew what the conditions for this day would be, and tire choices ranged from full snows to others running specialized ice tires like ours- my thought was to be ready for the slippiest parts and deal with slightly less than optimal performance on the grippy stuff, since it at least would mean we shouldn't get stuck on an icy hill again.  Off to the stages!

SS7 was Meaford-Mills, mostly a fast flowy thing and the surface was as mixed as we could have imagined- ultra grippy snow, messy slush, and ice all greeted us in different places.  There were lots of corners where we could actually enter on the "wrong" line for more grip and then skim across the ice at the apex to take off again.  I'm pretty sure this was the one where we had our only spin of the rally, coming into a spectator L1 at a nice angle when suddenly the surface turned to pure ice and the car was backwards.  A quick corrective donut to get aimed in the right direction and we were off again- video soon, I'm sure.  Still a reasonable time on this one, holding our position.

SS8 was Huff-Old State, and it started off similarly enough to the last one but eventually worked its' way up into a hilly, rough, deep snow woods section with lots of blind crests to commit to while the car was bouncing/sliding around in 4th gear.  I believe we achieved our max speed of about 88mph here, and things were really clicking- notes good, driving pushing enough while leaving enough reserve to stay out of the trees, car working perfectly, we were flying.  The James' got stuck after running wide and we moved into the regional 2wd lead and third place overall 2wd.

SS9 was Agren-Hunters, which was the reverse of the monster hill that trapped many of the 2wd cars last year.  We got a great start on this one- 2wd launches at Sno*Drift take like 20sec just to really get moving, but I noticed that the snow in the left embankment was basically untracked and pretty much parked the car in it on the start, and it worked beautifully.  We got down the big hill without plinko-ing the car off anything, ran a clean stage despite a lot of ice (the tractionized tires seemed to be good for about a 10% grip increase on pure ice) and we held our position.  This style of driving isn't really the same thing as gravel events, but I think we're better at it- blame too many winter commutes in unsuitable rwd cars.  I love it.

Back to service for a check of everything and the car was happy.  Dog approved and ready to go, didn't even need fuel:

Things were getting a little soupy but we left the tractionized tires on- they were so good on the ice it wasn't worth risking losing that to gain a little in the increasing slush, especially with an ice base of 3"+ on the roads that probably wasn't going anywhere.

The next loop was a repeat of the same 3 stages and they were icier, slushier, and in some places just water over ice which if you can believe it is even LESS grippy than regular ice.

We really nailed SS10 Meaford-Mills, keeping a good pace and just barely tapping a couple snowbanks without incident.  Nick Allen got himself stuck for a bit and we moved into 2nd overall 2wd with a solid lead on all of regional 2wd.  The tractionized tires clearly had less grip when things got slushy, but it was relatively predictable.

SS11 Huff-Old State again and we slowed down a bit in the choppy section- the rear tires were starting to go off a bit, it seemed, and upon closer inspection later the sipes and grooves had nearly all closed up so they probably weren't clearing snow or slush and just turning into snowballs in the deeper stuff.  We were still in 2nd overall 2wd but Nick Allen was catching up fast in his national O2wd Fiesta after escaping the snowbank.

SS12 Agren-Hunters again and our start line hack worked a second time!  The downhill was much icier and really difficult this time around, we passed Bardha and Roshea who had clearly built too much speed and crashed off into the weeds before finishing with the hill, and at the bottom I bashed the snowbank pretty hard when I target fixated on a photographer who was in a really unsafe location- that shook me up for a while, I really thought we might hit him.  We had a relatively uneventful middle to the stage, although I was getting picky on note delivery; I have noticed in retrospect that when I do this it usually means something is actually off with the car and I'm trying to compensate for it without slowing down, which is dumb and I should be aware of in the future.  Sara had nailed the notes the entire rally thus far and I don't think the delivery was actually any different.

Near the end of the stage, entering a L3>2 that was brown, we encountered what I'm pretty sure was the dreaded brown ice again- the bank came up fast, and I yanked the handbrake to hit it sideways but we had too much speed and the front end rotated in and beached itself.  We were stuck!  Sara tried to push but the entire car was high centered, we weren't going anywhere- she got the tow strap out and in about 2min our saviors arrived in the form of Andy Didorosi and KJ Miller, who made quick work of pulling us back onto the road and were off.  This whole thing cost us about 3min total, but we were still leading regional 2wd and only in 3rd overall 2wd.  Thanks guys!

In service, we checked everything over and found the rear tires to be totally cooked- looks like tractionized Blizzaks can do about 5 stages on the rear of a rwd car before they close up too much to be useful.  We rotated the fronts to the back in the hopes of still getting a little extra forward grip, and put regular Blizzaks up front.  Nothing else seemed to be hurt from our little excursion.

Cort, Sean, and Jonathan made this easy- honestly between the pull on stage and the crew the theme of the afternoon was "other people keeping us in the lead."  5 gallons of fuel and out for the last loop.

SS13 was East Branch, and it was 15 miles that started fast and got twistier with a massive bumpy climb near the end.  I backed it down a bit on the fast parts, and although we found the top of 4th gear several times I didn't grab 5th, that was plenty on ice for me thanks.  The sun was in our eyes for a little added flavor, too, and the long shadows of the trees made it very difficult to judge the surface.  When we finally hit the big hill, I asked Sara to stop reading- I wanted to listen to the engine as closely as possible to ensure minimal slip on the way up.  It worked, we made it up with the back end dancing around inches from the banks, Sara caught us up on the notes immediately at the top, and we cleared the rest of the stage without incident!  Lots of adrenaline.  GRMer engiekev greeted us at the time control out!

A long transit to SS14, Bonfire Alley (yeah it has a different name but come on, we all know it as Bonfire) and.... a delay.  Now, really this didn't matter, but the time control was on a steep uphill, and with traffic backed up we didn't have a ton of choices on where to stop.  So, once things started moving, as we crept toward the control, helmets on and ready to go, suddenly the car wouldn't move.  We were stuck on a hill on the last 20ft of a transit route!

Sara hopped out, dug her boots into the snow on the shoulder, and pushed- and with just the right amount of wheelspeed and everything she had, the car sloooooowly moved up the hill to a flat spot.  Wouldn't be Sno*Drift without getting stuck a couple times I guess, and Sara hopped back in with boots full of snow for the last stage.

Off, into what looked to be a clean L4, and it immediately turned to ice- luckily our handbrake bank bonk worked this time, and we smacked off it and continued down the road; we would find out later that Dan and Nate had blown clean through this bank and executed what can only be described as a video game move to ramp back over the bank out of the woods and finish the rally.  Needless to say, that video is going here once posted.

Bonfire Alley is seriously like nothing else in rally, there are THOUSANDS of spectators and huge fires and you can feel them flare up as cups of gas are thrown on when you drive by.  We took it relatively easy, just soaking it all in and trying not to touch the banks again.  Screengrab from a video since we don't have a photo here yet:

We made it!  Another Sno*Drift finished, and pretty well as far as we could tell- when we got to the final time control, they pulled us into the tech shed for weighing and inspection:

Car checked out although it weighed pretty heavy- I may investigate that later to figure out how much of it was slush or inaccurate scales.  Either way, no risk of being underweight for our class!

Everyone turned in their RallySafe, helped push Tim Michel's broken Audi into its' trailer, and headed over to the podium.  So how'd we do?

1st place regional 2wd and L2wd, and 3rd overall 2wd.  Couldn't be happier with that!  Dylan and Ben got 3rd in their class, and Dan and Nate were just off the podium but got attacked with the grape juice anyway:

Back to the house to tell stories and laugh about near misses.  This was a great time, and I finally feel like we really got a rally right from start to finish- speed, adventure, all of it.  Thanks for coming along, thanks to everyone who helped, and thanks to those who inspired us to try it again.

I hope this video works- Dylan and Ben are always entertaining on their in-car, and their first encounter with Bonfire Alley sums the feeling up pretty well:

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffacebook%2Fvideos%2F1360943954688169%2F&width=500&show_text=false&height=281

Congrats!

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

With all the bonfires I half expected to see the spectators holding pitchforks. 
 

Major congrats to you guys on the win!

Woohoo! Congrats!

Thanks for the detailed recaps!  Some of the best reading here on the forum.  What does "L"2wd mean?

In reply to Lof8 - Andy :

L is for "Limited"- basically it's up to 2.5L NA and 1.6L turbo engines that came in the model you're running, minimal engine and chassis modifications, and stock suspension geometry although increased travel and reinforcement is allowed.

Great work, and thanks for doing such a thorough write-up on the "behind the scenes"! There's so much happening it's hard to keep track.  Seemed like bonfire alley was the busiest it's been in a long time, wish we could've seen it.

Sharing my fun souvenir from SS6, a DSM (I forget which one, yes there was 2!!) pulled in to FTC towing the bumper cover and crash beam on the tow strap!  Santiago got back on stage and fixed it later!

I was there with some GM folks, I got to take our RallyCross project vehicle there to work controls (watch out for an article on scca.com soon!) #iworkforgm

*Said article is posted!* https://www.scca.com/articles/2016938-scca-rallycross-playpen-for-automotive-manufacturers?fbclid=IwAR2KAWjlR6NMnsuI6hE2vTf6T1Ge7CDr1z0a5JGFb9b2Yo91x40wVsmTfi0

Thanks for these detailed reports.  It's been 35 years since I competed in stage rally (back in the pre-detailed-notes days, and almost run what you brung), and these reports put me right back in the car.  Love it,there's nothing better than stage rally!

I was marshaling for the first time this weekend, had an awesome time. On Friday I was posted up on Blue Lake-Soden on a tight right hand turn, seems like things got way icier for the second running. A couple cars ended up stuck in the snow bank and we did our best to push them back out as soon as possible, pretty exciting!

engiekev said:

Great work, and thanks for doing such a thorough write-up on the "behind the scenes"! There's so much happening it's hard to keep track.  Seemed like bonfire alley was the busiest it's been in a long time, wish we could've seen it.

Sharing my fun souvenir from SS6, a DSM (I forget which one, yes there was 2!!) pulled in to FTC towing the bumper cover and crash beam on the tow strap!  Santiago got back on stage and fixed it later!

That was Dave Matheson's DSM, which later went on to win regional L4wd- there were two DSMs on that podium, somebody pointed out the last time that happened was probably in the 90s.  And of course thanks for volunteering!

In reply to Jim Pettengill :
Thanks!  I am yet to do a tulip rally, although a few still exist- the closest I've gotten so far is probably running RallyMoto, can't read much of that rollchart at speed.

In reply to GDare:
Thanks for volunteering!  Things were absolutely icier on the second pass, the lights also make it harder to discern what's ice at night compared to the reflection of the sky during the day.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

I should have sent you flyers to pass around for my DSM. I'm guessing there are some rally people who'd appreciate a rust-free project as a starting point. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

I hope this video works- Dylan and Ben are always entertaining on their in-car, and their first encounter with Bonfire Alley sums the feeling up pretty well:

 

 

Dude.

Also, what is with the camera?

Rally hangover must be setting in about now..

Remind me, when's the next one?

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Image stabilization makes the field of view move back and forth a bit.

In reply to ralleah:

Bristol and/or McCreary- Bristol being the more certain one.  They're only a week apart but they're also only a couple hours away from each other, hard not to scheme...

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

its not hard to scheme unless you got work commitments in-between the two...