SCCA RallyCross at Thunderhill, November 2002

Dirty lessons, dirt cheap

This fall, I purchased skid plates front and rear for my subie and looked for more dirty events to enter. In November, the folks from the California Rally Series were going to host their first Rally School at Thunderhill, followed by a RallyCross on the second day. The school was an intense six hours of classroom instruction followed by two hours of driving on dirt obstacle courses. The class room sessions had one hour lectures on everything from car prep, to rally timing, to rules and car classifications. The instructors were all seasoned rallyist including Ben Bradley and veteran navvie John Dillon. The driving was great too. They had a fully rally prepped Mitsubishi Evo VI on display as well as three gravel courses – slalom, skid-pad and figure-eight. Each course had instructors, seasoned rallyists like Mark Nelson and Lauchlin O’Sullivan, whom would jump in your car and coach you through the obstacles. I learned more than would ever imagine, even though I never got out of first gear. Lauchlin was awesome – his enthusiasm was infectious, and it was so great to have a someone of his caliber in MY car telling me what to do! The class was only $180, and I highly recommend it. The second day at the RallyCross my scores improved to the top ten in my class.

2002 The Road Not Taken Rally Cont.

From the navvie seat of Jon's WRX

2002 The Road Not Taken Rally

Later in the summer of ’02, I attend the third event in the i-Club Rally series, a map style Monte Carlo rally. This time, I’m navvie for my buddy Jon. With some luck, we take first place. At the bar after the event the organizers, Pete and Lee, have a talk with Jon and I and convince us to go up to Oregon in August and compete in The Road Not Taken SCCA touring rally. It’ll be a all day affair, on dirt logging roads west of Salem. Jon and I take the challenge, and I agree to navvie. We drive up all day Friday, meet up with the rest of the competitors at the Rally HQ. Some 40+ cars show up, including four curious newbies from the SF Bay Area. Pete and Lee give us some tips, and off we go. Granted this was more gravel driving than either of had ever done, it could have been the Dakar Rally to us. The 250 mile event kept us on our toes, with lots of very narrow and twisty roads up and over all sorts of mountains. Since we are running dead last in the run-order, we end up finishing well after dark around 9pm, long after the winners (Lee and his brother Rod) had have showers and drink or two. We were totally exhausted. The drive home had us both nodding off on the way to our hotel in Salem. The event was awesome, and hooked us both on gravel rallies.

More Dirty fun at Thunderhill

SCCA RallyCross at Thunderhill, July 2002

More dirty fun: RallyCross

It wasn't long before I got wind of the first ever SCCA RallyCross event in northern California. Rally-X as it's called, is much like AutoCross, but on gravel. The idea is cars compete one at a time, on a course set on gravel and defined by cones. Courses are typically about 30 seconds long, each competitor gets three runs and the times are added up for your daily score. This was a LOT of fun!! About 60 cars came ranging from stock street cars to stage rally prepared 400hp monsters. I didn't do so well, but I had a hell of a good time. The one thing I did learn was that I still had no idea what I was doing on loose surfaces, but it was fun nonetheless!

And later, I wrote a book about it...

On the Beach

An Introduction to Dirt

So with my new exhaust and my new skills, I'm chomping at the bit to fulfill my car's destiny and do everything imaginable with it. A post on the i-Club invites fellow subie owners to a day of dirt at the Hollister Hills off-road park. Some guys say it will be fun, because not all of the trails are too tough for our subies, and there are maps with color coded trails like lift maps at ski resorts. I can't wait. My fellow subie owners, Brian, Jon and Ashley all caravan down to meet our fellow i-Clubbers. The day goes fine, we find some great roads and have no worries in our AWD steeds. After a while we find a short bit of road that takes a hard left, then an easy right-left "S". With good visibility, and radios, we block it off rally style and start taking turns. We all went a couple times. Then some of the more experienced of us, start taking it faster, with no issues. I think, "I gotta try this". So I hammer it and take the first left while braking from 35-20, lose the tail, counter steer and brake some more. The car goes into a permanent dirt-plow mode, and goes nose first over a dirt embankment and parks in a bush. My lovely subie is beached on its bottom teetering with two wheels off the ground. I grab reverse - quickly to avoid embarrassment, one flick of the throttle with no momentum and I know I'm stuck. I hear on the radio "we have an accident!" followed by "bring in the Durango!". We pulled my car back to terra firma and found that I took out my left fog light, pushed in the bumper and flared out the LF fender. A quick look at the car and off we went. I spent the next day with my buddy Ashley taking my bumper off, straightening the support members, pushing in the fender and zip-tying my bumper back together. My car is still in this condition check it out sometime!

Track Day No. 2: Thunderhill

After my excellent experience at Infineon Raceway, I sign up for a SCCA sponsored HPDE at Thunderhill. For Christmas, my dad splits the cost of new exhaust for my subie. I shop furiously, and settle on the stainless MRT turbo-back model. It arrives the week of my HPDE, and I take Friday off to install it. Dad and I work all day putting it on, but it was worth it! My other mods at this time include a Kartboy short-throw shifter with a Momo Race Airleather Aluminum knob, and Whiteline adjustable rear sway bar with end links and every ricers' fav, a 50-50 atmospheric blow-off valve from Go-Fast Bits. Since the WRX was only about 6 months old, my car caught a lot of attention from the other students and instructors. One instructor begs me to let me ride with him. He later explains that he is a former stage rallyist from the U.K and has done events all over Great Britain and Europe. The day was great, the track superb. I learned TONS about the handling of my car, and how much it could be pushed. Although I never lost grip, I gained a lot of confidence in my driving. This was an excellent event, and I highly recommend it to anyone.