For a couple of years now I’ve been thinking about learning some rally driving skills, and for the last year or so I’ve had a plan in mind — to attend a course for a couple of days at the Team O’Neil Rally School in Dalton, New Hampshire.  After one reschedule, I finally made it in the last week of January, and it was definitely worth the wait!

I made my way to the nearest town of Littleton, NH through the mountains of New England, where there seemed to be an extraordinary number of signs telling me about dangers to be looked out for.  Seems like just about anything can fling itself in front of your car here.

Along the way I also caught sight of the occasional picturesque abandoned car whose story I’d be curious to know.  I’m not sure about the first one, it could be a Hudson I think, but the second looks like an early 60s Buick LeSabre..

In Littleton I stayed at the historic Thayer’s Inn, established in 1850.  Over the years it’s hosted many famous people, and as I walked up these stairs to my quaint little room, I couldn’t help wondering who else had climbed them.  Check out the list below.

I won’t bore you with all the lovely details of this old inn, but just as an example, the rooms are still heated with the original decorative cast iron radiators.

But, getting down to business, I drove out to the rally school the next day and classes began.  Each day we had a brief classroom session of less than an hour to introduce us to what we would be doing, and familiarize us with the basic concepts.

One of the more amusing things about the experience was that I hadn’t actually driven in any snow for years, and yet I signed up for a course in the dead of winter in the White Mountains, pretty much guaranteeing that I would be learning in snowy conditions.  But as they told me on the phone, the skills for loose surface racing are the same, but on snow everything is just amplified — you either get it right quickly or you learn about the consequences of getting it wrong… quickly.

We started out in front wheel drive Ford Fiestas to get the feel for left foot braking, weight transfer (on all axes), correct lines and late apexing, threshold braking, object avoidance, pendulum turns, and the like.  The only time I could take pictures was when I wasn’t driving, either outside the car or riding along with someone else, so unfortunately there are no pictures of me actually driving here.

We started out on the skid pad, then moved to a slalom course, and then onto the roads.

At the end of the first day, we also had a mechanical class, where I learned more about transmissions and suspensions than I ever knew before.

We also spent a fair bit of time discussing the use of different types of tires for different applications.

We were able to ask all the questions we wanted, and go over the cars there in great detail, which was fantastic.

Back out on the course on day two, we continued our practice with the Ford Fiestas.  We tied the slalom run and pendulum turns together, and I was pretty stoked when the instructor in the car with me told me that I had a “near perfect” run, and that I was tying the turns together beautifully.  I have to say that it’s an absolutely electric feeling when you get it right!  I pretty much knew from that point on that I wanted to do more of this!

From the Fiestas, we transitioned into all wheel drive Subaru Imprezzas, and did all the same exercises.  The feel was quite different between the two cars, but having learned how to use weight transfer to control the movement of the car and to manage traction, it all made sense.  With a bit of thought I’ve pretty sure I could translate these techniques to any vehicle.

One of the more challenging aspects of the course was the fact that, as my skills got better, the course also got significantly more slippery.  As you can see from the picture below, by the end of the day all of our sliding had turned the snow into ice.  It gave rather insane handling, but was an absolute riot, and I was amazed and how I could control the car even on glare ice!  As the instructors said repeatedly, “when in doubt, throttle it out!”

Returning back to town on the last day, kind of exhausted from hours of learning and driving, I got a beautiful view of the White Mountains ahead.

And the next morning, over a good old fashioned American diner breakfast, I spent a lot of time thinking about my goals in taking this course.  I wanted to know if I would enjoy rally driving, and if I had any basic skill at it, and I discovered that the answer to both questions is YES!  I want to do more of this, so I’m going to get more involved in rally driving in the future.  It will happen.  It will.