Jason Harper

MEN’S JOURNAL

Forget driver’s ed. Rally racing takes place at near-NASCAR speeds on real roads, using souped-up street cars. And you can learn how to do it in just a few days. BY JASON HARPER

My rearview mirror sparkles with sudden light: the headlights of a car behind us. This is a bad thing. “Stay on the road; let him worry about passing,” instructs my co-driver, Jeff Becker, belted in tightly next to me.

I lay onto the gas, trying to put distance between us and the encroaching Mitsubishi. Rain hemorrhages down my windshield, and I’m a twitch away from smacking the car — a borrowed Subaru WRX STi worth about $165,000 — into one of the trees lining the sliver of dirt road. My vision is narrowing, my brain’s fuzzed, and, ridiculously, I’m trying to go faster. Rally race drivers call this perilous condition the red mist, and I’m choking in it.

 

My eyes linger on the rearview mirror and I nearly miss a sharp left-hand turn. I yank the wheel and the car skitters sideways. A swift countersteer (rightrightleft!) straightens the car and Jeff cries out, “Hard right, 10″ rightbrakegascountersteer). Gravel shotguns off the undercarriage. The Mitsubishi is nearly on my bumper and my guts are floating somewhere about neck level. “Here!” says Jeff, just as the road widens slightly and the Mitsubishi skirts by so close that our tires almost kiss.

Mud blasts over our windshield, and I’m blind. A flash of lightning illuminates a tree in front of us. Right in front of us — I’m off the fucking road. I slam on the brakes and stomp on the gas at the same time, violently kicking out the back end of the Subie. It’s a classic rally move, but there’s no time to be proud — I’m giving gasgasGAS and if the all-wheel drive doesn’t pull us outta this slide, we’re gonna slam into that tree. A beat, then traction. The AWD arrests the slide and we fishtail down the road, away from the tree.

Jeff’s voice returns to calm, reading off pace notes in code: “K Turn 30, do not cut…” Christ. This is a 12-mile stage and we’ve got another four to suffer through. I’d been warned that this is a survival sport.

The first time I saw a rally race, I knew I had to do it. Last year I covered a World Rally Championship event in Argentina and witnessed very mortal Subarus, Peugeots, and Fords doing immortal things. On the tiny roads outside of Córdoba the pros spit over single-lane bridges at 120 mph, jumped 20 feet over crests, and somehow avoided mowing down the fans clumped at the most dangerous corners. These were four-door cars — sedans! — pulling Dukes of Hazzard moves. I was hooked. But I didn’t want to watch other guys do it. I wanted to drive.

And unlike in, say, NASCAR, I actually could. Americans tend to think of rally racing as strictly the Baja 1000 or Paris Dakar, but those are only two specific, grueling races in a worldwide sport with 30 annual events across the U.S. Races typically take place over several days, broken into stages that vary in length from five miles to 25. Cars run speed stages one at a time, launching one minute apart, then racing the clock on dirt-, gravel-, or snow-covered roads at up to 120 mph. Think of it as the motor sports version of free-climbing — gutsy outdoor extremism. It has little of the commercialism of regular racing. This is just the driver and co-driver in a souped-up production car pitted against real-world situations on real-world roads.

My first step was to contact Subaru, one of the big boys of the sport. Their WRX STi was designed for rally, and one of their team members won the 2003 World Rally driver’s title. They agreed to soup an STI up for me to drive, enlist a support team from Vermont SportsCar, and sign me up for Michigan’s Lake Superior ProRally, one of the season’s toughest. They even got Becker, the winningest co-driver in U.S. rally history, to sit in the passenger seat.

None of it would quite prepare me, however, for the moment when I see the orange board marking the end of this stage. I think two things. (1) We’re alive! (2) I’m in way the fuck over my head.

‘There are two types of rally drivers,” says Tim O’Neil with a smart-ass grin. “Those who’ve barrel-rolled and those who will.” It’s less than a week before the Lake Superior race, and I’m at the Team O’Neil Rally School and Car Control Center in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Whether I’ll survive the two-day, 15-stage, 130-mile race is largely dependent on these four days of instruction. Timo, as he’s known, is a Samuel Adams drinking ringer for Denis Leary. He’s also a five-time U.S. rally champ who learned his techniques the old-school way. Travel the backroads around Timo’s native Dalton, New Hampshire, and he’ll point out all the places he has crashed while “practicing.” One instructor, a former state cop, admits that he would often drive the other way when he saw Tim. “It was easier than arresting him,” he says.

However unorthodox, Timo is a crack driver and a gifted teacher. He’ll also be competing at the Michigan race the following week. Many students simply come here to learn superior handling skills, the kind of knowledge that saves lives on black-iced highways. Even a two-day rally course will lend a novice great skills in bad driving conditions.

But I’m here to learn the art of going fast on bad roads. Forget about driving around sharp corners in a gentle arc; rally uses four-wheel drifts to slide through them. You kick the back tires out, swiveling the axis of the car and leaving the nose aimed down the inside straight. It’s akin to a skier skidding on his edges to scrub off speed or to slide around obstacles.

Tim also teaches “left-foot braking,” in which the brake and gas pedals are modulated simultaneously. By doing so, a driver can control the weight of the car, making the front or back heavier or lighter, and therefore easier to turn or slide. One can actually steer a car with very little use of the wheel. My favorite stunt, though, is throwing the hand brake to make especially tight corners. In all it’s a mad science that contradicts every mandate I learned in driver’s ed.

The school sits beside a mountain with miles of private dirt roads. The first two days the five other students and I screech around the course in beat-up cars. We destroy two VWs and one Audi, the victims of trees, ditches, and a big rock. “Rally is a survival sport,” Tim explains. “The odds are structured against you. Every corner is a quiz, and you’d better pass every quiz.” Only half the entrants typically finish a race; the rest crash, crumpling into trees, smashing over boulders, or barrel-rolling into ditches. I begin to realize what I’ve got myself into when I ask if I should wear long underwear during the race to combat the cold. Tim looks thoughtful. “Are they fireproof? No? Better not then.”

On my third day the crew from Vermont SportsCar pulls up in a car trailer and unloads an Impreza WRX STi decaled in snappy blue camouflage. Though much of it is stock, the car has some 800 man-hours put into it. All unnecessary weight has been stripped, and an internal fire-extinguishing system, five-point safety harnesses, narrow racing seats, and a full roll cage have been installed. When I hear the 280-horsepower engine kick to angry life, I christen it the Monster. It gives me a long, deep pause. Tim takes me for a few practice laps, and then gets out and slaps me on the back. “Got it? Good. Try to keep it on the road.”

The storm has worsened. It’s after midnight on this long first day of the race, and a line of cars has pulled off to the side of the road, pelted by a blinding rain. The winds have knocked a massive tree into the road, and race workers are attempting to chainsaw it out of the way. To pass the time, Jeff, 55, has been telling me about his first rally at Lake Superior, 19 years before. A champagne importer by day, he lives in New York City and, with a balding pate and glasses, looks more like a number-cruncher than a daredevil. You’d never guess the kinds of crashes he has endured.

At last the cars begin moving. I ease the Subaru toward the starting line. We’re next. The 30-second digital clock begins its countdown. The high-intensity lights bolted to my hood carve a tunnel of light through the whipsawing trees. I gun the turbo engine, and we’re off, a Slip ‘N Slide on wheels. We round the first bend and see two orange caution triangles in the road. Somebody’s gone off. We pass a car with its front end burrowed into a tree — the co-driver is holding out an “OK” sign. Then two more cars mired in the mud, one billowing smoke. I can’t pay attention. I’m snapping the wheel around in a series of reflexive steers and countersteers. “Flat 200,” Jeff says. I pause; I can’t see the road beyond the trees but…I floor it.

The driver/co-driver relationship is one of combat-zone trust. The co-driver has a booklet of course notes prepared by the race organizers. It’s his job to read the notes aloud in high-speed code, advising the driver of upcoming turns and their gradients (from slight turns to hairpins), crests, and jumps, and hidden dangers like rocks and trees. The co-driver is sort of an accountant with balls of steel, the ego to the driver’s id. It is a no-kidding endeavor. A wrong call could kill them both. Subaru’s champion driver, Petter Solberg, once had his hood come unlatched during a race, the wind pinning it to the windshield. His trust with co-driver Phil Mills was such that they completed the stage blind, relying on notes. For the first time, Jeff and I are vibing. We’re in a flow, going faster. Then I see taillights: We’ve caught up with the Eagle Talon in front of us. “Pass him,” says Jeff. I find a bit of extra room on the right and gun the throaty engine — there’s an incredible 400 foot-pounds of torque there. We scoot past. It lends me the confidence I’ve needed. There are at least 10 cars that have gone off the road, and with each one we pass, I feel more exuberant. The red mist of the last stage is gone. One more stage to get through tonight and we’ll have finished our first day. Only eight more stages to survive tomorrow.

Damn.

‘Cinch the seatbelt around you as tight as you can stand. You’ll feel invincible, like you’re part of the car. Then hit the jumps for all you’re worth.” Timo flashes that evildoer’s grin. “Hey, it’s not your car.” Timo is currently in first place, and I’ve pulled him aside to ask how to best handle the big jumps on an upcoming stage. I look at him dubiously. I’ve never been airborne in a car before.

The weather still sucks on the race’s second day, but at least it’s daylight and I can see the roads. Yesterday we finished in the top half of the 47 cars in our category. Today the plan is to go faster. I found my groove this morning during an eight-mile twister that was a minefield of deep water splashes. Our times are better, almost respectable. Not everybody else has been so lucky. One team I got to know wrecked their pristine STi in last night’s final stage, its front end neatly folded around the trunk of an elm.

The next stage up is a short four-miler with open gravel roads. I’m making crisp turns and sliding the car nicely along at speeds in the mid-90s. The tall trees seem to be fast-forwarding by our windows. It occurs to me that a bad jerk on the wheel would mean…well, best not to think about it.

At last, early evening, it’s deluging and we’re at the very final stage. “Remember,” Jeff counsels, “a lot of people crash on the final stage. Just finish.” But I’m buzzing with adrenaline. I’ve got my sea legs — or mud legs — and am determined to make a stellar run. We peel out of the starting line. I’m no longer slowing down when we crash through deep mud holes. Water sprays 30 feet on either side. My mind has shut out all the everyday chatter — it’s that calm that extreme athletes talk about, hyperattentive yet almost serene.

Then — too soon — the orange board. We’re done. We survived. Jeff looks over at me, we slap hands. I yell, loud. At the service area our crew descends on us. Somebody shoves a beer in my hand. Everyone is standing in the rain, celebrating. I jog through the crowd and find Timo. He gives me a hug and a Samuel Adams Cream Stout. “Well?” he asks, his enthusiasm unabated despite having come in second — a mere 3.3 seconds behind the leader. I report that we’ve finished 15th out of 40 competitors in our amateur category. I think it’s pretty good. Hell, I think I’m a friggin’ stud.

Tim gives me that grin. “You’re one of us now. A rally driver. It’ll never be the same.” He turns away and I hear him say over his shoulder: “Man, you’re so screwed.”

By: Jason Harper