Team O'Neil Rally School & Car Control Center

Team O'Neil in the Press < Back | European Car , Jan. 2003

Dancing Through the Woods

Winter-time Rally with Timo
Text and Photography by Tim McKinney



"When you're winning a rally, there is nothing else going on, it is just a quiet world. You're dancing though the woods. It may appear to be something quite different to the spectators, but it is quiet and peaceful when everything is right. "There is a surprising amount of grip on ice, "said Tim O'Neil, as the trees flashed past. He grabbed third gear and accelerated. The old 4000 Quattro we rode in was propelled by a very new ur-quattro turbo drivetrain, and it slithered up the narrow, icy forest road as the tires struggled with the 300-plus ponies. "The problem is unlike gravel, when you lose grip, it is GONE! Period!" I took small comfort in knowing Tim was behind the wheel and not me. They say good things come in threes. I might argue for fours. I recently found myself back in Franconia, N.H., under Team O'Neil's excellent tutelage for a three-day refresher course and Day four of rally school. This is just two weeks after a fortnight-long trip that included watching North America's best rallyists at the Sno*Drift ProRally in Atlanta, Mich., a chance to slide Saab 9-3s around the Pas de la Casa ice track in Andorra with Simo Lampinen, and two days at the Swedish Rally chasing the world's best through the woods around Hagfors with the Saab Museum's irrepressible Peter Backstrom. I was even treated to a ride in one of Peter's vintage two-stroke Saab 93 rallycars. Shades of Erik Carlsson!

     Now it was my turn to challenge winter. "This is a perishable skill," said instructor Chuck Long. He was right. It had been 18 months since my first summertime visit (ec, March 2001) to the Team O'Neil Rally School. I hadn't built a practice car, and I hadn't stolen out late at night to practice pendulum turns. A three day Skip Barber racing School and follow-up Car Control Clinic had me thinking more about trail-braking that leftfoot braking and had taken me out of rally mode. And like the competitors at the two rallies I had just attended, I would have to do without the luxury of soft and forgiving snowbanks as I readjusted my mindset and prepared to contend with an extremely tricky mix of ice, snow and slush.
     "Last year the snow banks kept us in the rally three times, once at 90 mph!" noted 2001 ProRally champion Mark Lovell in Michigan. "The trees were closer this year."
     Observed O'Neil, "When we talk about winter driving, it's all about being very smooth and adjusting your speed to the conditions. Everybody says, 'I'm a pretty good driver in the summer, it's only in the winter that I'm not a good.' This tells me maybe you're not as good as you think any time of the year. In the summer if you go into a corner a little fast or turn in a little late, you're still going to be able to make up got it because of the amount of grip available. That grip isn't there in the winter, and when people aren't able to make their problems are obvious. If you have any bad habits, they really show up in the winter. I view winter driving as rallying's most difficult skill to master."
     Rallying, driving at "maximum attack" on loose surfaces has techniques radically different from those used in road-racing. "Good guys never turn early" is the mantra at Skip Barber, but here in the White Mountains O'Neil teaches, "Rallying is all about having all your turning dome before the apex." Skip says you should lift, brake in a straight line, then turn (we'll leave the nuances of trail-braking out of this discussion). Timo says lift, turn and then brake.

"This is the Scandinavian technique, left foot braking. Adding the brake to the throttle and steering wheel to help steer the car means you can use less of each. Once you start to get your throttle, brake and steering coordinated, all of the sudden you need far less steering. Get your hands." About the only thing both agree on is the advantage of taking a late apex through an unfamiliar corner, though for different reasons.
On the road course, a late apex allows you to safely "back up" to the optimal line through any given corner. Road racers see the same 10 corners 100 times each through the course of a weekend, and learning the proper line is fundamental for a beginning road racer. Rallyists, on the other hand, slide through 1,000 different corners one time each.

A late apex leaves the rally driver room in case a corner tightens unexpectedly or some other surprise lies around the bend. For a beginning rally driver, learning perfect lines and apexes isn't as important as learning the car control skills that you keep you on the road to the finish of the event. The faster you go, race or rally, the more important the proper line becomes.

The width of the road also has a big influence on driving style. If the stage is very wide, a proper racing line is the faster than a "Scandinavian Flick," or pendulum turn. As the road narrows, like most rally stages, left-foot braking and pendulum turns are faster. Either way, the same rule is, "Eyes up! Look through the corner and as far ahead as possible." Just remember. Looking where you want to go as a rally car slides sideways through a corner may require looking out the co-driver's window. Unlike pavement racing, where you adjust your speed before the corner, the typical rally corning technique involves sliding the car through the corner. Turn in early maybe lift just a little and add some braking with the left foot. Weight transfers to the front, increasing the grip and offsetting the car's tendency to understeer, the LFB generates some oversteer and the rear end starts to swing around.

Countersteer to offset the oversteer, and add power to cancel the swing when you can see through the corner. If you need to slow more, go more sideways. All turning is done well before the apex. Sliding the tires sideways across the surface sweeps away the loose gravel and gets the tire down to the better grip below the loose surface. The idea is to maintain as much speed as possible through an unknown corner and to use the brakes, not to slow but to rotate the car. Nine out of ten corners on a rally stage are faster than your think-just always be ready for the tenth!

Winter rallying demands a mix of both rally and pavement techniques. With no extra grip available at maximum cornering speeds, road racers lift, brake in a straight line and then turn. As conditions on a stage become more and more slippery, the rally driver begins to do the same thing. There is no extra grip on shinny ice, and all braking needs to be done before the turn. "Grip is constantly changing in the winter. There's deep snow, crunchy snow slippery snow, ice, gravel, frozen gravel, slush and on and on. There are so many variables in the winter that you need to be really good at constantly making lots of little decisions and adjustments based on changing conditions," said O'Neil.

"In the winter, because you have to be so much more careful with weight transfer, wheel lock-up and wheelspin, you must be able to LFB. Under aggressive driving in winter conditions, LFB becomes very important," continued O'Neil. "When it is slick, always have some brake on, even just 1- or 2% to help control wheelspin and control understeer. The traction control is your left foot (think weight transfer and extra grip). On ice you need to turn in less than you think. A big

steering angle (especially with sudden inputs-remember, you must be smooth) lose the grip, and adding more unwind the wheel to find the grip again even though it seems wrong to turn left to go right. LFB can help rotate the car at small steering angles."
You can also use the "swing" LFB generates to your advantage. Sliding through the slalom, or around a twisty stage, it is possible to carry the swing generated at the first corner through the entire run. Lift, turn, brake, release the brake, accelerate (control the swing), countersteer. If you hold your slide, it doesn't take much input to use the initial swing to rotate the car the other direction for the next corner. Get it right, and you use almost no steering on the icy course as the car happily swings through the cones.

Add just a couple more elements to the above, and you'll be doing the "Scandinavian Flick" in no time. Approaching a T-junction on a narrow road, rally drivers will move to the inside, opposite the racer's line and slow (threshold brake) to 35 mph or so to set up a pendulum turn. On ice it is especially important to be disciplined with speed. Lift (at 25 meters), turn (away from the corner), brake, release the brake (13 meters), turn (backwards the corner), blip the throttle, countersteer. The rear will pendulum around the front (hence the name), and you will have all your turning done well before the apex. Add a little LFB to control wheelspin, accelerate to stop the swing, power past the apex and be on your merry way, having used the virtually no road at all.

Equipment, particularly tire selection, plays a huge role in winter rallying. The Pirelli teams picked wrong the first leg in Sweden, Michel didn't, and the Peugeots were able to open an insurmountable lead. "I wouldn't be nearly as brave if I didn't always have the tire for the conditions," said O'Neil. "Gravel tires are bad in the snow, snow tires are bad on ice, and ice tires are bad in snow and gravel. If you have the wrong tires, no matter how talented you are, all you can do is slow down and take it easy."
Mental preparation is also an essential element in rallying. "You have to be really focused, really pay attention," he continued. "Everything needs to be slowed down in the winter. If you do everything just right you get to live! If you are not careful, you night find

yourself thinking,'I'm upside down, it's night, it's 45 below here in northern Quebec, and nobody saw me go over the bank. It doesn't matter how many skills you have if you can't use them out in the woods, in the dark when the lights are flickering the oil pressure buzzer is going, the tires are worn out, one brake is gone and the co-driver is yelling. You have to realize you need to slow down and use the 'co-driver yelling/the tires are gone/we have no brakes technique.' If you go off the bubble, you have to recognize it and slow down. You can't go full speed in the car and only half speed in your brain."
The instructors at Team O'Neil continually emphasize the need to let a great run sink in. Stop, get out of car and let your body remember what just happened. Soon instinct will take over and you will move to the next level of driving. On Day Two I was distracted and kept making mistakes. Setting up for one pendulum turn, in a car that didn't like to rotate, I stabbed the clutch instead of the brake. While half my brain was busy berating itself, the other half realized I was in a car, on ice, moving along quite smartly, pointed the wrong direction and about to crash. Without really thinking about it, I stabbed the throttle as I turned back, countersteered, controlled the wheelspin with a little LFB as I added throttle, and finished the best pendulum turn I've ever done. Never touched a cone. It was so pretty the guys following behind stopped and started clapping.
"Sometimes," said O'Neil, "you just have to grab the car by the neck and put it where you want it." Now I know what he means.

< Back | European Car , Jan. 2003