Riding shotgun in the WRC Subaru

Step one: Unbolt the passenger seat in your cousin Jeb's pickup. Step two: Climb in, and lay on the floor while he does doughnuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot. This is what it feels like to ride in a WRC car as it flies down a gravel stage in the Finnish forest.

Subaru World Rally factory driver Petter Solberg is young, boisterous and smells much better than Jeb. He also has better car control. Because Solberg's co-driver Phil Mills is human ballast, they place him low and back in a surprisingly comfortable, but nonetheless very disorienting reclined position. He only has to see the road well enough to keep in synch with the pace notes he and Solberg made on the same road a few days earlier.

Before coming to Finland, I used the phrase "WRC-scale effort" to describe Subaru's U.S. rally team that competes in the U.S. ProRally championship. Now I see how wrong I was. When you count the drivers, co-drivers, team managers, service crews, gravel note crews, PR staff and the cappuccino distribution team, the Prodrive Subaru team alone brought nearly 70 people to Rally Finland. They also brought 1,056 Pirelli rally tires--enough to ensure a supply of every possible compound and tread pattern for three cars during the three-day event. Rallying is big business here, but even on the business side, it's all about the competition.

Prodrive's David Lapworth is evasive on the subject of budgets, admitting only that they spend "tens of millions of dollars," on a season, "but not as many tens of millions as Peugeot." That extravagance bought Peugeot a championship last year--the first year the championship didn't go to Mitsubishi or Subaru in five years.

Unlike Mark Lovell's WRX rally car, which remains very stock on the inside, Solberg's racer is virtually unrecognizable. The driver's feet are in an elevated footbox with oversized, bottom-hinged pedals; the shifter consists of two thin carbon-fiber paddles behind the wheel, while the big carbon-fiber handle in the shifter's old home locks the rear brakes and simultaneously disengages the back half of the all-wheel-drive system. Then there are the knobs and switches, the video screen in the dash, the carbon fiber everywhere and the jungle gym of roll bar tubing.

Solberg's technique with the WRC car is also completely foreign. Acceleration, braking and cornering forces blend together in an elaborate dance with the bumps, jumps and the occasional disorienting view of a tree sliding by. I even try watching his feet, hoping to learn some steps from a master, but I can't make sense of any of it.

Sprung surprisingly soft and with plenty of suspension travel, the WRC Subaru is designed to soak up monster jumps like potholes.

Forced to breathe through a 34mm restrictor, WRC cars offer lots of low-end torque and surprisingly little action on top. They make just more than 300 hp, which is much less than the U.S. ProRally cars. Still, because it's so thoroughly developed, the WRC cars end up being faster.

Where Lovell's acceleration, braking and shifting points are limited by the time and space needed to operate the controls, Solberg can do everything simultaneously. When Lovell shifts, he has to lift off the throttle, which interrupts the flow of power and makes mid-slide shifts a tricky proposition at best. Solberg, on the other hand, bangs off upshifts and downshifts mid turn without the slightest effect on the car's attitude.

Either that or he's just really good. At age 26, Solberg has already been driving sideways for 19 years. When he was 7, he got a used Beetle and immediately learned to slide it. "Because I was living on the farm, well, you know how it is," he explains.

Sitting in Mills' recliner of terror, I try to comfort myself with Solberg's credentials. I'm glad he was a Norwegian R/C car champion when he was 13. I'm in awe of his three consecutive Norwegian rallycross and hillclimb championships. And I find it reassuring to hear him talk about his first rally car--a 340-hp Volvo 240. "It was a fucking great car," he exclaims, the words coming with wild-eyed enthusiasm. "I'm trying to buy it back now just so I can have it around."

Still, as we float sideways and nearly weightless over the crest of a blind hill and plummet toward a fate I can't see, it's hard to forget the footage of his WRC Ford Focus flying into the trees at last year's Finland rally.

From my seat, I can't figure out why we're still driving sideways down a perfectly straight road. Then, suddenly, we're at the bottom of the hill, the free-fall stops, the road goes where we've been pointing all along, and we're off.

Oh, I get it.

This is the difference between driving with pace notes and American-style blind rallying. Not knowing where the road would go next, an American rally driver would have to slow for the crest, slide over it slightly sideways, and be prepared to snap the car in whatever direction is appropriate. Knowing the road drops down a hill and then snaps left, Solberg can rotate the car before the hill, while he still has grip, and crest it so fast that he floats over the road on the other side.

When he rallied in Norway, the rallies were also blind, but the pace notes, he says, make things much safer. I wonder how many Americans would understand the safety benefits of flying over a blind hill sideways.

Behind The Wheel

Sometimes hard work doesn't pay. Senior editor, Josh Jacquot was working hard on a photo shoot the day the phone rang, so I was back in the office. Because I was sitting by the phone, I got the driver's seat of Hyundai's Production Class Tiburon rally car. Our hard-working lensman, thanks to his diligence, was sequestered in the screaming ballast seat, while I tried time and again to hurl us off a cliff on his side of the car.

Hyundai Motorsports has been competing in the SCCA ProRally championship for more than six years and has brought home five manufacturer's championships and 34 overall wins in that time. The turbocharged, all-wheel-drive Open Class Tiburons have been the cars to beat for the last four years. Despite outward appearances, ours was not one of those Tiburons. Ours, prepared for the Production Class, was basically a stock Tiburon with some really good shocks. Production Class cars are required to keep the stock drivetrain, stock brakes and even most of their stock interior. Limited-slip differentials are allowed in Stock Class, but we didn't even have one of those.

That didn't stop us from being cocky, though. Coming straight off a one-race win streak in the Datsun Rally Beater (see "We Promise You an Adventure" in the July issue), we figured we were now an unbeatable team. You might think Hyundai Motorsports would be happy to have an unbeatable team on board, but for some reason the group seemed a little uncomfortable when Jacquot proclaimed our 100 percent chance of victory.

Hyundai Motorsports' PR manager Toni Honsowetz was like a broken record. "Just bring the car back in one piece so we can let the next person drive it." Does she worry this much every time she hands over the keys to this car?

Our air of confidence notwithstanding, I was quaking in my driving suit at the thought of driving a front-wheel-drive car on Oregon Trail's notoriously slippery roads. The logging roads are all perched on the sides of hills, hills which are all steeply crowned, with their ill-defined edges rolling off into big, scary dropoffs lubricated with moss, wet leaves and various local slime molds. And, of course, there are lots of trees, tree stumps and deep, slushy sawdust.

It's not like I've never driven a front-driver, but in the dirt, none of my front- or rear-wheel drive instincts seem to work. It is common rally knowledge that front-wheel drive is faster than rear-wheel drive, but everything I knew about driving in the dirt told me that couldn't be true.

Luckily, Hyundai brought along Tim O'Neil to try and cram a little FWD knowledge into my head before the start of the race. O'Neil owns and operates the New Hampshire-based Team O'Neil Car Control Center [www.team-oneil.com], a fully equipped rally training center that is quickly gaining a reputation as the fastest way to knock two years off your rally driving learning curve. With one of his standard two- or three-day courses, O'Neil surely could have taught me everything I needed to keep the Hyundai out of the ditches. Instead, we had two hours.

O'Neil preaches left-foot braking as by far the fastest and most effective way to drive any rally car, but especially a front-driver, and on the drive to our Olympia, Wash. practice road, he briefed me on the technique. Basically, you keep your right foot on the gas and your left foot on the brake and use your feet to steer the car. Sound crazy? You bet. O'Neil makes sense of it all by looking closely at what happens to the car as you try to go around a corner. Usually, as you first turn in, the front tires will dig in and turn the car, but after that initial bite, they will lose grip and the car will start to understeer if you are going fast enough. It turns out that if you use the brakes to transfer enough weight to the front wheels right when they first bite, they'll grab hard enough to tuck the nose into the corner and fling the tail out. Carry enough speed into the corner and you can ride that slide around until you are ready to power out onto the next straight. Playing the weight-transfer game, however, requires constant fiddling with the gas and brake pedals, hence the need for a foot on each.

All the theory sounded great, but actually making it happen turned out to be a tremendous mental battle. Driving the Hyundai on the wet, crowned roads of the Northwest was about as similar to driving the Rally Beater in the desert as driving a forklift is to flying a helicopter. In our two hours of practice, I only did it right about five times and came so close to running over our fearless photographer Tim McKinney that I could literally smell the brand of shampoo he had used that morning. Yeah, we're going to win...

O'Neil's classes are all at least two days, because, as he explained, you need to let the new technique sink into your head for a night before it can click and work properly. Sure enough, after two nights of mentally driving those same gravel roads, I took off down the first stage and everything clicked. The first real stage was an amazing, flowing roller coaster of gravel. Nobody had told the organizers about Jacquot's pre-race victory proclamation, so we started dead last. This meant there were plenty of tracks for us to follow. The fast line, it appeared, was the one where you drop the inside front wheel off the inside of the road. I tried, and sure enough, cornering on the skidplate seemed to work quite well.

Oregon's weather conspired to make driving very interesting indeed, alternating from rain to snow to sun and back again several times during each stage. Turning big, tall rally tires with its stock engine and gearing, the Tiburon was not exactly what you would call a powerhouse, but it withstood a most severe beating with nary a hiccup. In total, the poor engine must have spent 10 minutes on the rev limiter. With my left foot on the brakes all the time, getting over to the clutch to grab third gear was simply too much for my haggard mind to handle, so instead, I rode second gear through most of the rally. Despite being ridden so hard, our only mechanical problem was a rear brake line that started leaking two stages from the end. With only four minutes to effect repairs, O'Neil and crew simply blocked off the offending line with some pliers and we finished on three brakes. As for Jacqot's victory prediction? He was right.

Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Pro/Celebrity Race Training

There are two events in Southern California that bring together more celebrities than any other. One is the Academy Awards, the other is the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, the premiere stop on the 2002 CART Fed Ex Championship.

The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach brings out the best in the world of motorsports, but cars are not the only attraction.

Part of the race weekend, is the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race. As the world's longest-running and most prestigious celebrity racing event, the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race has introduced more than 300 of your favorite stars - from Clint Eastwood to Cameron Diaz - to the high-speed challenge and thrill of life in auto racing's fast lane. Professional drivers and celebrities bang fenders in a 10-lap sprint around the nearly 2 mile Long Beach Champ Car Circuit, giving them the chance to put the pedal to metal from behind the wheel of modified, race-ready Toyota Celica GT-S cars. The celebrity race will raise $100,000 for “Racing for Kids,” a non-profit organization benefiting the children’s hospitals in Orange County and Long Beach.

We had an exclusive look behind the scenes to experience what it takes to turn a Hollywood celebrity, into a race ready road warrior.

It all started in the California desert at Willow Springs and Danny Mckeever’s Fast Lane, the official driving school for Toyota and the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race, to take part in the 2002 Toyota Pro/Celebrity training. We entered the classroom to find some of this years entrants: Patrick Stewart (X-Men, Star Trek), Goran Visnjic (ER), Dara Torres (Olympic Gold Medalist Swimmer), Jacob Young (General Hospital) and other celebrities from television, movies and sport.

Danny McKeever wasted no time in getting to the heart of the matter.

Day 1: The first part of the day was spent getting acquainted with the car, the track and the basic physics behind driving a car to its limits; that’s right physics; racing is a science. Danny introduced the class to the terms apex, and heel/toe, oversteer and understeer. But it was out on the track were everything clicked, bells rang and light bulbs went off.

Out on the skid pad, the celebrity students learned what these cars can and can’t do. They ran them through barrage of braking maneuvers, slides, 180s, and 360s. To drive 45 mph in someone else’s car and do a 360 is way cool.

The rest of the day was open lapping, where the students learned to find the right line and improve consistency. Dara Torres and Tom Rundai of Longo Toyota, last years winner, seemed to feel right at home in the driver’s seat and ran laps at a blistering pace.

Day 2: started with a brief discussion about the track, the line and was followed by a Q/A session. Then it was back in the cars. Seat time, seat time and more seat time is the only thing that can improve driving skill and consistency.

Everyone at this point seemed comfortable in the cars, running them at speed and running them in a pack. Tom Rundai and I spent half the afternoon playing Cat and Mouse, which is most beneficial, especially if you can find someone good to run with. I’d pass him, he pass me and so on and so on…until I spun, only to see a wave goodbye from Tom. Thanks Tom. After spending 4 ½ hours in the car, we were all spent.

Day 3: put the participants in real race situations: a full field of cars, open passing, pace car, flags and everything they would see on race day. It is one thing to run your car a speed on an open track, it is something totally different to run in traffic. Jacob young from General Hospital was setting the pace for his group, while Tommy Kendall, big surprise, was leading group B. Then Danny put all cars on the track at the same time and drivers learned quickly what its like to run in traffic. 17 cars on the track and they are all out to beat you; some running fast, some running faster. Learning to deal with the stress of finding the right line, carry speed through the corners and dealing with other cars in essence teach them to be a racecar driver.

Stay tuned for an update of the practice sessions at the Long Beach Circuit and the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race happening Saturday, April13, 2:00 PST.

Danny McKeever introduces the class to the Toyota Celica GT-S.		Dule Hill of the West Wing checks his rearview mirror.
Primedia's Troy Hanson takes a break.	Troy Hanson gets ready to head out.	IRL driver Sarah Fisher locks one up in corner 1.
Another lecture from Danny.	General Hospital's Jacob Young leads the pack.	Sarah Fisher in action.
The #1 car screams down the straight.	(left to right) Jacob Young, Patrick Stewart and Dule Hill.	Patrick Stewart prepares for the task at hand.
Tom Rudnai of Longo Toyota, last year's winner, gives the thumbs up.	Students learned that hitting the apex is the fast way around the track.	Gorin Visnjic, from ER, lead group B.
Sarah Fisher negotiates turn 3.	Keith Crain gets in car instruction.	Hanson in the #1 car goes through the chicane.
Cindy Lux gives some advice on the racing line.	Troy Hanson listens as Danny McKeever breaks down his performance.

Ice Maidens - Andros Trophy Ice Racing

This is a race circuit with a difference. It's situated high in the French Alps with a surface of pure ice. There is no run-off area and no margin for error. If you get it wrong here, you'll plough straight into a frozen snowbank and destroy your car--simple as that. No one seems to have told the driver of the sky-blue car, though. The badge on the car's nose says it's a Kia, but with its wide body-kit, it's like no Kia I've ever seen before. With its screaming, high-revving engine reverberating around the snow walls, it sounds nothing like a small Korean hatchback, either. Whatever it is, there's not going to be much of it left unless the driver decides to lift off the accelerator and go for the brakes--soon. But even if that happens, what good will it do? What chance is there of slowing the car down from that speed on this surface?

At last, it sounds like the driver is going to at least try. The engine note falls away. But only briefly. Half a second later, the driver has reapplied the throttle fully, as if just to make sure that it was fully buried in the first place. The car heads for the corner, charging hard past the last possible braking point, surging well beyond any final chance of taking the corner, at least in any conventional fashion.

Just as all seems lost, the driver gives the car a quick flick from the steering. First, the nose is pointed out, away from the corner. Then, at the last possible fraction of a second, the car is turned back in the other direction. Now the nose is tucked back into the corner. Having completed this pendulum shimmy, the car is completely sideways.All four tires scrabble for grip, throwing up clouds of ice shards that glisten in the winter sunlight. The driver turns a helmeted head to the left, steering the car by looking out the side window. The high-speed slide is beautifully controlled. The rear bumper drifts towards the outside snow bank, but never touches. And all the time the driver holds the accelerator flat-out and never lifts.

This is the Andros Trophy ice racing series, the most spectacular sideways show in motorsport. It's held every year at a series of purpose-built tracks at Alpine ski resorts. Qualifying is held in the morning and afternoon, and when the night comes, the drivers race by floodlight in arenas of ice.

Out on Serre Chevalier circuit, the driver of the blue Kia completes the qualifying laps and trundles back to the paddock. I follow, but by the time I find the car again, the driver has climbed out and disappeared. The mechanics are hard at work, though. Already the car is up on jacks and, very carefully, the studded tires come off. Next, front and rear panels, hood and trunk are removed, allowing full access to a mid-mounted V6 engine.

This is definitely no ordinary Kia. With its four-wheel-drive chassis, removable body panels and engine set behind the driver, it's similar in specification to the Group B rally cars of the mid-80s. The ones that were banned for being too fast and too dangerous.

Piloting something like this is definitely a job for a hard case, if not a head case. I go off in search of the driver. I have a picture in my mind of a 40-something bloke, probably a French national rally champion in his youth. Now the race suit would be a little strained with a bit of a Bire Blonde gut and the cropped hair would have turned grey. But he'd still be hard and fit-looking, he'd have to be to drive something like this on the ice.

What I find instead is petite 26-year-old Justine Monnier. I have to wait my turn, this French lady has autographs to sign for her fans--a legacy of her reputation as the fastest lady on ice. This morning, she has finished third in a sport that is pretty much dominated by men who fit my mental stereotype. But how did Monnier end up here?

"I was a professional ski racer before, but I broke my knee three times," says Monnier. "I applied for Trophe Andros and there were 150 girls. I won and got a free season. I finished second in the Ladies Cup and after that, I went with the big cars and the boys."

Just how powerful are the big cars? They produce 350bhp and weigh just 2094 pounds, but, says Monnier, it doesn't feel like that. "Actually, on ice, you don't really feel the power, because the car is sliding quite a bit. You don't have the feeling of a lot of power pushing you into the seat. It's easy to drive with four-wheel-drive and four-wheel-steering."

Easy to drive? Come on, that's got to be an exaggeration. "It is really easy," insists Monnier, "but it is hard to be fast. When you want to go really fast, you have to focus very hard, but not push too hard, because if you touch the wall it is finished. It is too easy to just push too hard and reach your limit". Success in ice racing seems to require a delicate balance of pushing flat out, yet displaying the most delicate nuances of car control simultaneously. Monnier says her experience as a ski racer helps.