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.