Rally and great world roads: 3/13/11

The 2011 Cochrane Winter Rally is Round 1 of the WCRC championship.

Weather conditions: great sunny day

Road conditions: tricky, on some stages there are water, rough ice, wet ice, gravel, dirt, snow - just everything.

Competitors: 19 teams, 19 cars, 10 of them Subarus, just one of them white JDM STI, just like Colin McRae's car :-)

Service park before start

Our team setup service area

Start of 1st stage of the rally

Before rally I told myself to be slow and careful on first 3 stages. There were pretty tricky road conditions, we had everything on the road: rough ice, polished ice, wet ice, water, snow, gravel. mud. And we expected in many places conditions will change all the time, rough ice can became polished ice when cars brake or slide thru corners, hard soil can become mud when sun heat the road, and so on.

But I was careful only on 1st of 2 my short stages. On the way back I speed up right away, made stupid mistake on 1st chikane, went off road, dig show for 10 minutes until Mike pull me out. Then I was very calm, told myself now I have absolutelly no reason to drive fast, just relax and enjoy. But I was calm just 2 minutes until I buckle up myself, connect intercom and press pedal. When I just started to drive and reached some speed, started slides, etc my brain said this is much more fun than slow driving and may be I became a little mad Confused

I knew it can be more slippery ice before bridge, I knew its pretty narrow bridge but somehow I think risk it good for rally and spectators need some fun as well. So I did not brake earlier and when I feel that ice I knew I will hit the bridge so I prepared to correct spin after hit.

I checked video and I do not see what exactly mistake I did after that. I turned wheels to right before impact and put them straight after impact when car was driving straight. How did I slide to the ditch? I am not sure.

Perhaps I expected more heavy impact and over-corrected expected rapid spin that did not happen because tires found some grip on relatively dry surface on the bridge, that's why impact was easy - there is just small scratch on left wheel and left bumper.

Probably my another mistake was to choose classic trajectory. As I see now its right on polished ice while there are some snow outside of ideal trajectory. Polished ice is not good for any tires, especially for old tires with some lost studs...

So I hit the bridge then cut snow bank on right side just a little bit but on this speed it was enough. Show catch the car like cat catch the mouse.

Car become airborne for a moment

I saw nothing because of snow on windshield but I press gas trying to correct trajectory using my sense of balance and trying to keep some speed so car can go to the road without stopping. I did not see but I knew road must be somewhere on the left :-) and I knew if car stops, we stuck here for a long time.

Unfortunately it did stop and we stuck just 100 meters before finish of the stage

Polish rally fans and my friends jump right away tried to pull, push, swing and dig car out of snow but without much luck

When we finally get out of snow (thank you Mike again) I realized we damaged suspension. Car was able to reach service park so we can check damage.

Control arm was bent. Its not a big damage but without spare parts we were unable to continue rally. Too bad, the following stages were very interesting and challenging.

So we became spectators and watch the snow. And show was unpredictable

Many times champion Hardy Schmidtke showed fastest time on 1st stage but his car went of road on 3rd stage, cut the tree and was destroyed by fire :-(( Driver and co-driver were not injured.