Team O'Neil Rally School & Car Control Center

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School of the Controlled Skid

Rally racing is a messy hoot.
But first you have to unlearn most of what you know about driving.

edited by William G. Phillips with Trevor Thieme
photograph by Sam Walsh

THIRTY-ODD YEARS of driving, including a road racing license, and I just can't get my left-foot braking. Not Tim O'Neil's version anyway, a precise ballet requiring that two feet control three pedals, the goal being to shortcut sharp, snow-covered corners side ways at 30 mph. And frankly, O'Neil, a five-time U.S. and North American Rally champion, isn't helping matters.
"Turn! Brake! Release! Countersteer! Accelerate!" He shouts as we skid around a hairpin turn, adding in a crisp New England drawl, "Oh, Jonny, this isn't good."
It's day one at the team O'Neil Rally School in Franconia, New Hampshire. It's billed as "the world of high speed driving on loose surfaces," though a more accurate description might be the art and science of controlled skid. Over three days, I learn how to push '80s-vintage sedans way past their limits and use the resulting chaos to my advantage.
O'Neil is one of the premier rally schools in the world, though the sport- the soccer of motorsports- has been relatively unknown and certainly underappreciated on the side if the Atlantic. In Europe, it draws spectators en masse to public roads from Norway to Greece

Breakneck speeds on the public right-of-way, however, never passed muster here. But now, thanks to increase TV coverage-made more interesting with in car cameras-and a handful of popular videogames, that's changing. So much so, in fact, that several automakers are introducing production versions of the rough-and-tumble racers. Due out this spring is the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII, an all-wheel drive (AWD), packs 227 horses into a 2.0-liter turbo engine and is selling like high-test coffee at a 4 a.m. rally checkpoint. Subaru also plans a more powerful STi version, due put this summer. Racers used to modify production cars with tougher tires, special lights and a power tweak. But today's top pro rally cars retain little more than the original body shell. Most boast a 400-hp-plus turbo engine, stiffened chassis; roll cage, rugged transmission to handle all the power, and an assortment of tires to tackle just about any terrain from asphalt to ice. But at O'Neil's school, the tech is more down and dirty. Here, front-wheel-drive training is taught in mid-'80s Volkswagen Golfs outfitted with roll cages, safety seats and rally tires. A similarly equipped Audi 4000S Quattro is used to teach AWD skills. They're rugged and affordable, and with 85 and 115 horses respectively, they won't run away from novices like me. The key to handling them is weight transfer. Hard braking shifts weight forward, adding to front wheel traction while sending the rear skidding wide through turns-quintessential oversteer. Shift weight to the rear and the front wheels lose grip more easily-in other words, understeer. Either way, speed is your friend. Enter a turn too slow and you'll stop instead of skid.


Here's how to put theory into practice: Entering a right hand curve, for example, rotate the wheel 90 degrees right to start the car turning. When the front moves right, jab the brakes hard with your left foot, keeping the accelerator partway down with the right. This shifts weight to the front for extra grip; the loss of traction in the back increases the car's rotation around its vertical axis. Ease off the brake and crank the steering wheel left 180 degrees (90 degrees left of center) and press the accelerator. This shifts weight to the rear, stopping the car's rotation. Do it properly and you'll accelerate out of a corner. Flub it, as I did repeatedly, and you'll slide headfirst into trees, tumble sideways and roll, or spin and slide backward into the woods. O'Neil tries to reassure me: "I've crashed hundreds of times." No wonder he conducts this training on a flat, open skidpad. The maneuver is difficult enough when the surface is consistent gravel, but the night before, 3 inches of snow fell on the White Mountains, creating a surface that now varies from packed snow to a gorp of mud, gravel and slush. And there's more to learn that righthand skids-one needs to turn left as well. For whatever reason, I'm better at right turns. Rear-or all-wheel drive changes everything. And the sharpest corners call for a "pendulum turn," the hardest part of my instruction here. It consists of feinting a move one way and then turning sharply the other so the rear end swings even faster-a sort of automotive crack-the-whip.
Day three is my final test. That's when we head out to mock rally course in the woods to lean combination corners and uphill and downhill turns. Shady areas are so icy that even O'Neil slides off the road during demonstration runs. And while there's better grip on the beaten paths, they still covered by slop that splatters spectacularly through turns. That afternoon, however, my training starts to jell-timing and balance yielding momentary flashes of brilliance amid hours of struggle. It's tough to teach an old dog new turns, but I'm undeniably quicker through the slalom and under better control. Not that we've been doing anything at high speed. Training has been limited to second gear to minimize another difficult technique: shifting. Unlike in road racing, where downshifting is done before a corner, rally downshifts happen while the car is skidding through the corner. That's the lesson for the four-day course that also includes handbrake and 180-degree turns, says O'Neil. Psyched about my late-developing just in time-before I unlearn how to get home.-JOHN MATRAS
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