The Mountain Pass at Rally Speeds
By Richardd Adams July 2012
During my short spell in off road rallying, I soon discovered a little weakness I had. As a highly talented and fearless racing driver, all collapsed when confronted with a high mountain pass with shear drops on one, or both sides.
Don’t get me wrong, we never went off over the edge to tumble down smashing everything in sight. No, we never went off, as it is difficult to lose control at 5 km/hr. That is the speed we were doing, motivated by fear of doing the over the edge trick mentioned above.
Unless it was a tarmac surface, then nothing could delay an old Works Toyota, it was taken to its limit and beyond, until the shocks broke free from their sockets or the navigator relieved himself in an expensive racing overall.
When the dealer supported VW Golf GTi arrived, it too was exposed to the abuse on tarmac surfaces, beating even the mighty Audi Quattro and multiple rally champions on occasion. So, with the fear of the loose surface mountain pass firmly established, Pikes Peak in the U.S. was never gonna see us, unless we were walking.
Since then, they have gone and covered half of the way up in tarmac, leaving the rest in loose gravel. Now, us entering this event in 2012 would mean, we would be extremely fast in the beginning, but finishing awfully slowly ……
I then checked in with the experts on how they would do this race up the mountain … just watching them work, made me realize that we would be awfully slow, all the way up!
Now, join 2011 winner, Suzuki driver Monster Tajima, the only man to complete Pikes Peak in under 10 minutes …. that’s after, over the last kilometer, the engine gave up its need to live.
You are not gonna believe this ride: Tighten your seat belts, as 10 minutes is a long time to be fighting 700 kw in the back seat:
No comments:
Post a Comment