Crash course in rallying - Article taken from the Sunday Times
Next weekend’s Wales Rally GB will see the world’s top drivers battle it out. Tom Robbins of The Sunday Times went to rally school to find out if he had what it takes to join them
When you’re a new boy at rally school it pays to be on time. I was late — albeit no more than eight minutes — and took my seat sheepishly at the back of the “welcome” briefing.
I wasn’t worried. After all, such talks — be they “welcome drinks” on holiday or inductions for a new job — are usually little more than a chance to catch your breath, daydream and gawp at the strangers. Not at rally school.
“You just want a definite quarter turn of the wheel, then it’s down with the clutch and into the handbrake turn,” said the instructor, resplendent in a blue all-in-one racing suit, as he turned over the next page of a giant flip chart. “Think about weight transfer in the car rather than just the steering. Remember, these cars have race-car steering racks, so it’s about 2.2 turns lock to lock.”
It all seemed a bit much for 9.08am on Saturday. By 9.20am we’d covered “mechanical sympathy”, the principles of oversteer and understeer, the differences in front and rear-wheel-drive handling and the braking techniques in non-power-assisted rally cars.
By 9.25am we had our helmets on and were being led outside to a line of waiting cars, the 10 commandments of rallying fresh in our minds from the final flip chart. The first commandment was: “Be calm and comfortable before you drive”. I was too stressed to remember the rest.
Along with about 20 others, I was on a day’s course at the Bill Gwynne Rallyschool International, near Brackley, Northamptonshire. Opened in 1983, it was the world’s first rally school, but such establishments have boomed in recent years and there are now at least 40 around the country. This expansion has been fuelled by the growth in people giving “driving experience” days as presents, and by the demand for different types of corporate entertainment.
The sport is far more popular than you might guess from its limited appearances in the British television schedules. About 120,000 spectators attended last year’s Wales Rally GB, more than the 2003 British Grand Prix. The comparison is all the more impressive when you consider that the rally takes place dotted about the forests of south Wales, not a massive circuit just off the M1.
However, what rallying lacks in glamorous pit-lane girls or champagne hospitality suites it makes up for in the thrill of watching drivers hitting 90mph as they skid sideways round corners on single-track gravel roads.
Back at rally school I was led to my car, a 280bhp Subaru Impreza, and strapped in for a demonstration ride with instructor Paul Alexander. He has been winning rallies for six years and drives for Team Damage Control. During the week — a shade incongruously — he works in IT.
Off we went in a cloud of flying gravel and dust round the tight one-mile circuit at seemingly impossible speeds, spinning round a handbrake turn at each end of the course and dodging the piles of tyres that mark out the track.
Then it was my turn. I confidently passed the first test — not stalling in front of the throng of other pupils — and headed out to the course, or “stage” as we say in rally circles. I floored the accelerator and we zoomed off. All the while Alexander issued rapid-fire instructions through the in-helmet intercom: “Power. Brake. Off brake. Turn. Power. Clutch. Handbrake. Power.”
Between runs he would get out his clipboard and draw diagrams of the car showing how the weight distribution was changing as we took each corner. I nodded sagely. But back on the track, with the next bend flying towards me like a speeded-up film, the theory didn’t really compute and I put my faith in unthinkingly following his commands: “Brake. Power. Brake!”
Each instructor and rally car is shared between a number of pupils, so you get a brief respite between runs. Today there are three of us per car. My fellow apprentice rally stars are a broad mix, including both sexes and all ages. Alex Metcalfe, 19, from Maidstone, Kent, is a graphic design and photography student — she is hardly the petrolhead type you’d expect. Another pupil, Jimmy Koh, 47, is a boatyard owner in Singapore and has come to Britain on a three-day trip just to attend this course. A full day in the Impreza costs £350, a day in the rear-wheel-drive Escort is £255.
Over lunch Alexander tells me about the dangers of the job. It transpires there is a button on the floor in the passenger seat that allows the instructors to cut the power if they get a rogue pupil intent on going too fast. Accidents do happen, but rarely: three cars have been rolled in the school’s 21-year history and even then nobody was badly hurt.
The school now has a system designed to reign in dangerous boy racers: any pupil who knocks over a tyre at the edge of the course is “sin binned” and forced to sit out the rest of their turn. We tut disapprovingly.
Feeling relaxed after lunch I have my best run yet: fast through the first section, a near-perfect handbrake turn at the far end of the course (typically, way out of sight of the school building and spectators) and a stylish bit of four-wheel drift. Then as we approach the final hairpin, right in front of the other pupils, it happens.
I do a handbrake turn, but in the rush to remember the niceties of the “Scandinavian flick” (don’t ask) I forget the basics — like putting on the handbrake. The unsurprising result is that the car ploughs straight forward instead of rounding the hairpin, sending tyres flying in a massive cloud of dust (much to the delight of my hallooing classmates). I am duly sent to the sin bin.
Thankfully it isn’t held against me for long and I’m allowed back to face the most daunting task of all: two laps in which the instructor stays silent. Taking away the commands I’ve relied on so heavily seems like stealing a blind man’s stick, but after another surge of nerves I managed some reasonable laps.
At the end of the day I can’t say I felt a proficient rally driver, but for excitement and fun little on four wheels comes close. Back in the classroom for a debrief and prizegiving (none to your correspondent), the nervous faces of this morning had been replaced by broad grins and backslapping.
WHERE TO LEARN RALLYING
Bill Gwynne Rallyschool
The country’s first, it also runs courses on Welsh wooded tracks. Based in Brackley, Northamptonshire.
01280 705 570, www.billgwynne.com
