Rally of the Tall Pines
Posted by Ferdinand
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Very cool! Go get 'em, Ferdinand!
I need to see if I can find an online source for CRC TV to keep up with stuff like this. I follow the WRC all year, but I like the more local feel of smaller national series. The closest I will ever get to this in this lifetime is running John Buffum's Winter Challenge Rally here in Vermont. It's just a TSD rally with normal cars, but since it's put on by Buffum, it has been called the closest thing to a stage rally without actually being a stage rally.  __________ Dave '91 325iX |
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Cool videos Ferd!
I can't tell if you enjoy navigating with Martin or being a pilot more 
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CDNRally.com, covering the Ontario Performance Rally Championship, has just posted their summary of the Ontario Regional portion of the Tall Pines Rally, in which we finished 2nd Overall and 1st in 2WD.
http://www.cdnrally.com/news/martin-donnelly-wins-oprc-round-of-tall-pines-clinches-championship.html 
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Congratulations!
I'm enjoying watching your videos on the other site. It looks like so much fun. __________ Dave '91 325iX |
The fun is just getting started. The crazy big stages are still to come. Working on those videos now. They take a long time to process. |
I was at a loss for words at the time. A little shocked at how much damage they had done to the car, but relieved to see them both out of the car and okay. I've always been a big fan of Nathalie (and have a secret crush on her). For a couple of years, in addition to co-driving, she was doing commentary for the rally TV coverage. On transits between stages she'd give updates on how the rally was going. Or waiting to start the next stage she'd be out of the car doing standup commentary for the TV crews. Martin Walter and I, usually choking on dust in our Nissan and sweating, would have mud dripping down our faces by the end of the day. But Nathalie always looks like she's just stepped out of the make-up trailer. 
Martin Rowe, a Brit, was Production Class World Rally Champion in 2003, and British Rally Champion a few times. He was hired this year as the driver for the Subaru Canada Factory Team, replacing Patrick Richard (Nathalie's brother) who had to retire due to medical reasons. I've heard Subaru would prefer to have a Canadian driving for them instead and Martin's job is far from secure. This crash likely won't help his case. [www.youtube.com] Antoine is definitely WRC calibre. Multi-time Cdn Rally Champion and North American Champion. His WRC ambitions suffered a big financial setback last year. He rented an ex-WRC Mitsubishi, hoping to use it to compete for the North American Championship with Nathalie co-driving, but wrote off the car in a huge crash in the Oregon Trail Rally. It was a costly mistake. He was scrambling for sponsorship this year, and then managed to win EVERY Cdn National event this year. He's amazing. [www.youtube.com] [www.youtube.com] |
There is always the chance of something unexpected happening. But, life wouldn't be worth living if we were afraid to get out of bed every morning. It's all a question of managing acceptable levels of risk. Even riding your bicycle is fraught with risk, no? I do put a LOT of trust into Martin's driving skills. Fortunately he is not stupid. He also has a family with two children and like myself he is no hurry to die. I have been riding with him since 2007 and, with the single exception of our crash into a rocky ditch at Targa Newfoundland 2010, we have not yet ever crashed out of a rally together. 
Actually the thing I'm most afraid of is hard landings off big jumps. That and landing upside-down in water. In addition to our infamous DNF at Targa, of the many events we've run together we have only ever retired twice. Once, at the 2012 Black Bear Rally, we cracked the differential case on a rock and all the oil ran out. We finished all the competitive stages and were sitting 2nd overall, when the diff finally let go on the last road transit back to the finish ceremonies. A fellow competitor towed us home, but we were disqualified for the illegal tow. Bummer. [www.youtube.com] The 2nd retirement was in the 2011 Tall Pines Rally, when I hurt my neck and suffered a concussion on a hard landing off a jump and then couldn't stop puking. There was nothing wrong with the car or Martin, but I couldn't continue. [www.youtube.com] Martin had a significant crash in his first ever event in this car, with a different co-driver, in the 2006 Tall Pines Rally. Ken, his co-driver at the time, was behind in the notes, calling the next corner as a fast Right-6, when in fact it was a very tight Right-3. If you stop the video at 0:30 you can see a red warning arrow mounted on a wooden post. Instead of pointing 90° to the right as it should have to warn of the sudden sharp right ahead, some joker from the crowd of spectators gathered at this notorious corner had flipped the arrow so it was instead pointing nearly straight ahead. Martin managed to pitch the car sideways, but it was too late. As they left the road sideways they hit a rock which flipped the car into a rollover, and while still in the air the car struck a tree ten feet off the ground while upside-down. Luckily the tree hit just behind Ken's seat and not square into his door. The car flipped and spun down an embankment where it landed on top of another car that had just crashed in the same spot one minute before. It was a scary and expensive crash. Another benefit that I brought to the team, was better in-car video recording equipment. The image and sound quality on his old system was pretty bad. [www.youtube.com] I am very lucky to be teamed with a sensible driver who I trust. There have been times where I've thought we could be pushing harder. We both know the road continues straight over this blind crest. Why is he lifting off the throttle? Ya, so we lose a couple of seconds here and there being overly cautious where others might not have lifted at all. But I'm happy to say that Martin has never scared me or done anything outright stupid (other than sticking it in the ditch at Targa for which he is still kicking himself every time he thinks of it). I have occasionally been invited to co-drive for others, but I don't know them or trust them. There are certainly some other drivers that I do know quite well, and I wouldn't ever consider sitting in their car because they are complete lunatics. One big difference, I remember when you did the Stavanger Rally that you were not using detailed stage notes. In effect then every corner is blind and you have to take risks every time when you don't know what's over the next crest or around the next corner. If you drive safely, slowing each time, then you will be slow. If you gamble and take big risks to go faster, then certainly that will eventually end badly. But with detailed pace notes (assuming the co-driver is reading them correctly) you form a picture in your head of what's coming up next and then you can make an informed choice on how much risk you're willing to take. |
Yes, bicycling is dangerous as well. I was participating in an off road bicycle race far beyond my skill level this summer. I saw some of the other guys jumping over some roots on a downhill forest section. When I got there, I realised that I could not lift the front wheel off the ground at all while I was braking. I was however very successful at getting the rear wheel over the root, doing a nice face plant in the process. I also managed to continue after straightening the steering that was about 90 degrees off. I was asked to participate again next year, but I think I will pass. It is too risky for me. I gave up hang gliding as well before I had a serious crash. The track days on ice with a new car with no valid insurance, is also something that could go very wrong. The last two years I have been very careful. While driving sideways a whole weekend, I have not yet touched a single snow bank, and I have not had the car swap ends. I have also seen potentially slower drivers catch up and pass me, without giving in to the urge to show them how it should be done!
Example of very cautious driving recorded with a mobile phone: [www.youtube.com] (The car handles rather well despite missing a real limited slip differential, but has an annoying turbo lag that complicates things)
My fear in rallies would be hitting a pole or tree at high speed. They can penetrate quite far into the car.
In hindsight, what would you have done differently in that situation?
But that sprint rally was rather short. The reason we chose to not use stage notes, was that it was all on familiar roads. I had every corner in memory, so I knew what was supposed to be around every blind corner, but you never know if there is competitor parked in the concrete blocks. In some corners the fastest line went over some sidewalks and stuff like that, potentially damaging the suspension and driveline. We were one of very few cars choosing a safer line around those obstacle, as we knew the car was not reinforced as much as most of the others. If we had gone for the win, we would have to take the risky line, and could suddenly be without steering heading into a corner. After all, I did manage to take out an engine mount at the launch of the first stage, causing quite a lot of torque steer the rest of the rally. My co driver (and car owner) had pretty much only one task while I was driving, and that was to count laps on the loop stages. He failed.
Due to lack of experience with rally driving, I also misjudged the braking points quite severely. When inspecting the stages, we tried to guess what speed we could have in the corners, what speed we would reach on the straights, and where I thought I would have to brake. I had all this in memory as well, but I could have been braking far later and still made it around. That lost us some time. To be competetive, I would have to give up a lot of my margin for safety in these situations. My competitors seemed very comfortable with braking too late, crashing into all sorts of barriers. |
I didn't know you that you did hang gliding. I had an opportunity to try a friend's hang glider once during university, on a very small gradual slope barely inches off the ground. But I was completely hooked. Other than skydiving in a wingsuit (which I would never try), hang gliding is pretty much as close as one can get to flying like a bird. But I also recognized right away that one is very exposed to all sorts of dangers when hang gliding. Agreed. Those crazy overnight winter navigational rallies I used to do in my E30 with my 15-yr-old son Christoph navigating for me, ask Dave_G about those, they were quite crazy. On open roads, we could meet oncoming traffic at any time, with a 20 year old rusty car with no rollcage, no helmets, no special safety gear, and questionable insurance status. My wife would have killed me if I had hurt Christoph. In all sorts of ways, those events were a far greater risk in terms of liability exposure and health risk than what I'm doing now with Martin in closed-road performance rallying. That comes with maturity. Controlling the mental aspects and emotions is every bit as important a skill as actually controlling the car. Being able to suppress the "red mist" or road rage is a skill that also must be practised. You still have the touch. It's great to have an opportunity to go out and practise occasionally. Keeping those skills honed could one day save your life when something unexpected happens on the highway. Even just a branch coming through a window could be bad. A few years ago, at the Rallye Baie des Chaleurs, Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino had a scary crash. At the end of a long fast straight, over a series of many crests, they lost count of how many crests they'd already come over and missed the last note after which the road turns sharp right. The car went off sideways, bounced up into the air and snapped off a tree about eight feet off the ground. The car then came down sideways and impaled itself onto the remaining tree stump, with the tree running right through the car in one window and across out the other side. Lucky for them the stump went through the rear side windows where the rear seat would be, not the front windows... We could have tried pushing the car home for several kilometres, but even if that was possible we would have been far too late getting back. The rules are quite explicit that, with the exception of a quick push or tow out of a snowbank/ditch, the car has to complete the entire distance of the rally under its own power. That's a very good point. You were driving someone else's car. FWD as well, wasn't it? Practice on all sorts of different surfaces, gravel, asphalt, mud, ice, knowing exactly how your car behaves under every different type of scenario, that all takes time and money to perfect. Some people are specialists on only one particular type of surface, others like Sebastien Loeb seem to excel no matter what or where they're driving. When you are lapping continuously on the ice track, chasing other cars, you can memorize the best lines and can see exactly whether you are gaining or losing ground on other cars. But if you are doing solo timed runs, only one car at a time, it's completely different. You can't immediately tell whether you are faster or slower than others, and if you have to wait for thirty or forty other cars to complete their runs before you get your next chance, by then the ice track conditions will have completely changed and the lines you had hoped to take may no longer be the best lines, where you usually brake may now be polished ice. You need to react accordingly and adjust your strategy on the fly. And that's where some people really excel. It's not just about car control. Being able to think and constantly revise and adjust strategy while at the limit of car control is what makes some people better at the game than others. Our strategy has always been to ignore what others are doing and simply run at our own pace. Martin decides how hard he wants to push. Ultimately it's his money that he's throwing away if he trashes his car. He always leaves a healthy safety margin and won't take stupid risks. We have no hope of ever achieving the same pace as the top Open-Class 4WD factory teams. We are very rarely the quickest of the 2WD teams entered, although we're never the slowest either. There are teams willing to take much greater risks, either because they can afford the expense of rebuilding cars after every event, or because they're crazy stupid. Those teams rarely make it to the finish line, whereas Martin and I have an enviable finishing record. The Tall Pines Rally historically sees only half the entries making it all the way to the finish. In the eight times I've run this rally with Martin, we only failed to finish the one time that I quit on him due to concussion/nausea. |
But the dangers of hang gliding are very visible and obvious, so you are not likely to underestimate them. When you take the sensible precautions, hang gliding is actually a rather safe sport. I gave it up mostly because it was too time consuming. Here is a small video of me launching from a mountain some time during the previous millennium: [www.facebook.com]
It sure can, even though the necessary defensive reflexes are now also built into the modern cars. The dynamic stabilty system of our F20 one series is rather impressive. While the older DSC systems were fighting me for control by over-correcting all my inputs, the new system actually cooperate. It is not useful for track driving, as it brakes way too much, but it can come in handy in a critical situation on the road. My own ice track reflexes has kept the shiny side of my older cars up a couple of times. At one time, driving the E30 318iS, I was accelerating from 60-80 km/h in fifth gear on a wet road while swapping out a CD. I had my eyes briefly off the road when I heard the engine speed raise too fast. I had hit some black ice, and both rear wheels started spinning. The road was narrow and straight, with no cars coming towards me, but when I looked up, the car was already rotating way out of line. The friction was close to zero on the wet ice with studless tires. I declutched and spun the steering to full lock as quick as I could. This was all reflexes, so my brain was still not understanding the situation. The car was sliding completely sideways for what seemed like a very long time before it decided to cave in and point the kidneys in the direction of travel again. The other time was on a wet summer road, doing around 70 km/t around a corner in the E36 323ti Compact. I suddenly felt the steering go light, which caused an internal body reaction, raising the readiness level to DEFCON one. It was a right hander, with oncoming traffic, so there was not much room for understeer. Just as I felt the steering weight starting to come back, both rear wheels spun out. Since this was uphill, I had my right foot down. The ASC+T "stability system", which is really only traction control, was enabled. It did not manage to prevent the wheelspin. It did however prevent me from sustaining the slide under control by keeping some wheelspin. All I could do, was to work with the steering. Just enough to keep the car from swapping ends, but not so much that I crossed into the oncoming lane. It was a fine balance along the center line of the road. Eventually I could bring it back under control. Turned out that there was oil in my lane. After the corner, I called it in to the local authorities.
Yes, it was a Peugeot 205 GTi 1.9.
Yes, I have definitely noticed. We sometimes have timed solo runs on our ice track weekends. Particularly the cars with rally tires affect the conditions for the next car. Five laps with those tires, and the grip is excellent. 10 laps with studless tires, and it is polished again. Very difficult to judge the braking points. When I had the E30, I was younger and braver, taking more risk (and denting the front plate in the snow banks). Now I prefer to always err on the side of safety, which sometimes makes me too slow. But I have plenty of trophies at home, so I don't mind if the other guys get some as well!
Seems to me like you found a very nice strategy for winning the overall championship, except not participating in all the rallies. Sometimes the overall winner does not win a single competition, but keeps collecting those points, and avoids having to spend all the money rebuild the car. Instead that money can go into maintenance, better tires and maybe even some test runs. |
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