My First Time Rally Racing!

Recently, I was invited to drive a Subaru BRZ in rallycross. How could I decline?! I have absolutely no experience in rally but those that follow me know I have done plenty of autocross, track and some drifting. I do find it fitting that my first time rallying was in a Subaru, yet ironic because it was a rear wheel drive BRZ.

Here she is, the trusty rally BRZ. The rallycross group was pretty small, making a relaxed, laid back environment. As you can see by the cars in the background, we weren’t the only rear wheel drive cars. I was codriving with my friend (the owner of the car) and in rallycross cordriving doesn’t mean I’m reading a sheet of paper saying “Left crest, jump, right hairpin.” Instead we were sharing the same car, and with each run we would swap out. I was extremely excited, but a little nervous so I rode along with my friend so I would know what to expect.

Off the line, the FA20 feels like it has 700 whp, since it just lights up first gear; we are into second gear almost immediately. Your steering inputs take a second to react with the course, so the goal is to put your input in one instance before you think you would need it. Some ebrake was used to correct lines but if you set your corner up properly you won’t need it. Who am I kidding, the drifter in me was using the ebrake a lot! As you can imagine, a rear wheel drive car would be drifting everywhere, which it was. Albeit, my fastest times were the ones where I would slide the least and pay attention to that precious throttle control. Honestly, I had more fun being slow and feeling like a rally hero. It was quite the event to huck the car in sideways into a corner, letting the momentum and dirt slow you down, and watching the dirt kick up EVERYWHERE!

The way the event was run was pretty neat. Usually in autocross, all you take is your fastest time of the day. Here, they total all of your runs to one final time and that’s where you rank. This also means if you hit a cone it really does affect you (One cone is +2 seconds). In autocross, you hit a cone, you just write off that run and try again. After our lunch break, we run the course backwards, partly because of the way ruts will form. This adds more spice to the day to now run the course backwards.

Up above is my video vlog of the event. You can see some runs, some more of the cars that were there, I was even able to go on course and film some Imprezas kick dirt at me. I want to thank my friend for letting me experience this motorsport. Now I am going into the classifieds to find a STI for sale. Thanks for reading guys!