Rally Driving Experiences

If you've never been in a rally car before, you've got a surprise coming. The rally experience will seem much faster than you expect because you'll be convinced that the demonstration driver is out of control and about to crash. Thats because rally cars dont have consistent grip - the experience of sliding around not knowing which way you're heading can be very unnerving. It does take a while to get used to seeing a tree go past the front windscreen !

However, the driver is actually in control thanks to various driving techniques that you'll hear about and see on a typical rally experience day.

Although it seems unlikely, sliding a rally car around is actually a method of control. A lot of rallying takes part on loose gravel or broken surfaces and as you know, if you try to steer at speed and sharply on a slippery surface, you'll go straight on and crash.

So if you want to drive a rally car fast on gravel you have to set the car up first so that when you arrive at the corner, you're pointing up the exit ready to put the power on. If you've watched rallying on television, you'll have seen the cars arriving sideways at corners and this allows you to use power on the exit to hold the car on the stage and accelerate up the next straight.

This is just one of the rally driving techniques in use by most rally drivers.

So, you're heading towards a hairpin bend at 30mph expecting the rally instructor to tell you to slow down. Think again. Dip the clutch, give the handbrake a good tug, turn the wheel and suddenly you've had the real rally experience of pointing back the way you just came.

It takes a bit of practice to get it right of course: there's a fair chance you'll stall the car or spin too far the first few times. Later on, your instructor will probably be getting you to go faster into the handbrake turn, because if you're rally driving, you need to be on the power as you exit the corner. You'll be surprised how quicky you can go into the turn, because especially on a gravel rally stage, as you spin, the gravel takes a big chunk of speed out of the car.

Some rally drivers will joke that they don't use their brakes. If you watch the World Rally Championship on TV, you'll sometimes hear that a rally crew had brake problems and yet they've still done a top time on the stage. That's partly because you can scrub a lot of speed off just by being a bit sideways as you get towards a corner.

Normally however, you are supposed to use your brakes, but its mostly early braking to set up the rally car well before the corner, so that you can use power all the way through the corner. This gives you much more control on slippy surfaces and the benefit of a controlled exit, not having to jump on the brakes mid-corner.

If you've braked properly, you'll be able to do this. It involves holding the car on power in a smooth slide around corners so that you can often give it full throttle on the exit. This requires your wheels to be pointing up the exit road fairly straight, otherwise you'll spin or weave from side to side, wasting valuable time.

Your first rally sliding experience will probably be at the hands of the rally instructor. Just when you thought you were going fast enough for the corner, you'll feel the power go on. Actually having power on gives you a lot more control and its the way experienced rally competitors get their amazing speed.

When you see the WRC drivers cars pointing at trees well before a corner, that's what they are doing: holding their car in a power slide. Its just that they are going so fast and they have so much skill, that they turn their car in towards the corner really, really early.

If you want to take up rallying competitively, you'll get all these rally experiences and lots more. We've described what happens in a typical rally here: A Rally Driver's Day.

Plus we've also described the basics of how a rally is structured and organised here: Rally Day Organisation