Dirtfish Rally School driving experience
Sammamish, WA, 8:05am. Activated my Nokia N9 navigator and started my faithful, old Saab. Punched in the address, 7001 396th DR SE, Snoqualmie, WA, 98065.
Destination: Dirtfish Rally School.
This is my first time that I would be driving a rally car on gravel and mud, just for fun and to try out something new. As a Finn, I’m used to driving on gravel and mud. my driving started when I was 12 years old and my father bought me a VW Beetle. It had a broken clutch which I had to fix first. After that I drove it for many years on the back roads without any incidents. It was great fun.
But, this would be my first real rally car driving experience, below is one try... I have plenty of track driving experience but this would be something new.
I left early since last night was very windy and there would be plenty of fallen trees on the road. The hill up to Snoqualmie Falls was like a war zone, fallen trees all over the place.
I arrived little bit too early so I had a lot of time to walk around. The place is actually only 15 minutes from my home.
The racing office was inside an old Weyerhaeuser office building. It was very clean, well lit and a well done office. The lobby had 3 rally cars, 1980 Ford Escord, Richard Burn’s Subaru STi and 2001 Colin McRae Ford Focus. All were very well presented, clean and restored old rally cars.
Since I had time to spare, I went outside to look how the other group is doing whom started at 8am. It was now 9 and the cars were going really slowly. I thought: is this speed I would be driving? If that was the speed, I would be disappointed…
Clock was approaching 10 and other participants arrived. My friend, Chris Mason, arrived as well to take some pictures for me. Thanks Chris!
All started with a small 15 minute class room introduction, describing weight transfer, vision etc..
After the introduction we took the helmets and headed out to the cars in a van. It was raining, cold and windy. I stepped into the car; it was a Subaru STi with all the safety gear, roll gage. 6-speed manual transmission, just like a normal road going Subaru. I sat down and adjusted the seat to full front position but even in this position I wasn’t able to fully press the clutch. The Hand positioning was good but seat was little too low for my liking, I like to sit high to be able to see the apexes well. The intercom was connected and I met Adam. He was my instructor and started asking questions about my past driving experiences.
I don’t like to brag, so I gave vague answers. I prefer to keep quiet and not set any (false?) expectations, just like Raikkonen. I started driving, but cautiously, after having seen how the previous group was driving. I didn’t want to upset my instructor…
Adam started to give me hints to go faster, which I did. I didn’t want to go all out yet since I wanted to get familiar with the controls, brakes, traction level and how the car accelerates. After 2 laps we went back and it was my time to watch others.
2nd round, other 3 laps, this time a little faster. One of the comments from Adam was to be a little smoother with the brakes. On the track I use trail braking a lot and I’m used to control the under steer by left foot braking and moving the weight to the front wheels. Apparently he didn’t like that; instead, he wanted me to ride the brake during the whole corner and accelerating at the same time. I did that and it felt pretty good. The car has amazing acceleration and was very well balanced, with a good amount of power. A few times, I got the car pretty well sideways and this revealed one of the problems involved road cars are used. The steering was little too slow for my liking and caused some busy moves since I’m used to shuffle steer. Hands always at 10 and 1 o’clock positions, pushing and pulling the wheel. I have always used this technique; I use it on the street as well. Two hands on the steering wheel, never crossing the hands. Luckily the steering centered really well due to right amount of caster.
3rd round, this time Adam wanted me to go even faster. I gladly obeyed… Kudos to Adam that he let me to drive and didn’t want me to go slower, good job.
4th round, this time it was Adam’s turn to show how it is done. I enjoyed it a lot, harassing him to go faster. He took a different route around the compound for few minutes.
Class lasted two hours; I maybe drove a total of 15 minutes at full speed. This amounts about 20USD/minute, which is pretty steep price. This is my only negative about the whole experience. The cars were great and right ones and Adam did a great job in letting me really drive. I would have been really disappointed if I had driven 15 minutes at 10mph around the track.
I will be back.
Links: http://www.dirtfish.com/