DirtFish rally experiences will run from Saturday to Sunday, offering multiple opportunities for attendees to get in on the action.
For well over a century, car racing has been a way to push both men and machines to their absolute limits. In the early days of motorsports merely finishing an event was considered an astonishing feat, but competitors began to look for new ways to challenge themselves as cars got faster and more reliable.
Racing changed forever in 1979 when the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA) allowed four-wheel drive cars to compete in the events it sanctioned. Previously, the setup was banned so the majority of teams went rallying with rear-wheel drive racers.
Some of you may have already seen this one posted on our Winding Road Racing Facebook page. If you’re a fan of the Caterham cars, rally racing, or just darn cool on-board video, you’ll probably want to have a look below.
Running through the historic city of Guanajuato, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the drivers need to navigate along tight, bumpy cobblestone streets. As if that’s not harrowing enough, part of the stage takes place in the silver mines found under the city. Oh, and this stage is run at night. Yeah, it’s intense.
We are not rallyists. In fact, we don’t know much about rally, other than the accumulation of names and facts that car people pick up over the years; stuff like 33 EJB, Eric Carlsson, Mille Miglia, Audi Quattro, Lancia Delta S4, Colin McRae and Sebastian Loeb. That and the scores of YouTube videos we’ve watched of rally cars jumping and crashing spectacularly. We were, therefore, somewhat surprised to find ourselves packing for a trip to Newfoundland to spend a week running the 40 or so stages of the Targa.
Hardcore all-wheel-drive capability makes it a monster on the track. It operates very well when pushed closer and closer to its limits. There’s just so much grip on offer that you are generally at your limits before the car is.
Entering the small dirt oval at the Calhoun County Fairgrounds, I was the subject of some attention. Situated among a host of Japanese runabouts and numerous other cars that could fit in the trunk of the Beast, I had no hope of being inconspicuous. In retrospect, signing this car up for a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Rallycross event likely wasn’t the best use of the Buick’s ability, but from the moment I spied this car sitting on gigantic truck tires, I knew it was destined for an off-road adventure. That adventure materialized on Saturday December 4, as the Beast and I made a 200 mile round trip to compete in Round 10 of the Detroit Region SCCA Rallycross—the season ender—in Marshall, Michigan. If you’ve already spied the destroyed orange cone in the photo gallery, you’ve likely deduced that things didn’t go so well. In that assessment, you would be correct.
Audi has just unveiled the Quattro Concept. With a turbocharged inline-five producing 408 horsepower and Quattro all-wheel drive, the new Concept carries on the proud name of this rally legend. With a six-speed manual transmission, Audi expects the Quattro to hit 62 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds.
The Porsche 911 GT3 makes a beautiful rally car. This video shows the GT3 jumping, sliding, carving, climbing, squealing, spinning, and flying in various races in Germany, Spain, and Belgium.
Enjoy, and don’t forget to breathe.