RDRC S9 Round 4 - Rally Poland (15th March - 21st March 2021)

[Norman Bruce]

Poland

It started ok, little jumps and skips but I needed to go faster.

Yes, I'm flying now

Well the tree magnet was obviously going to kick in at some point.

I think I've escaped there not too much damage.

I was wrong.
That's a retirement from me in Poland, engine, radiator, gearbox, wheel geometry and a puncture.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I still hate this rally so much

Well, you got one very sexy car! That's something!

 

[Daniel Monteiro]

What an amazing rally! Like it was already said, the feeling of bliss is hard to beat when you feel you're going quite fast from jump to jump

The fans were out for some good action

The low light and the forests made for a beautifuland and unforgiving backdrop

I wasn't to be the lucky one to get a clean rally; an off-road excursion resulted in a pretty poor rejoin and a roll, which gave me my first puncture of the season. Decided to continue without replacing it; and from then on - it was Flat Out!

The feeling of going at full speed with only three tyres on the Sierra over some jumps and some frantic steering action was the most adrenaline I have got so far this season!!!


The following stage, with four good wheels again, was simply pure bliss... so I've recorded it with a retro touch, for the good times. The veterans will understand

Good luck to the rest of the drivers; just take it easy, don't crash, and we'll give you some points

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

Happy Birthday, Ole!

 

[Lytorxx]

Finished Poland and survived
In my opinion is this the most dangerous event in the S9 championship because the rally is so fast that a driver has no room for mistakes.
SS01 -SS04 went normal without special moments. This changed after crossing the finish line of SS05 because I touched one of the wooden time boxes with the rear. Luckily enough no puncture or similar major damage. With a look to the short service after SS08 I tried to minimise damage on the following stages.
With this in mind I was able to repair the most damaged parts of the car with a quick fix in the last service except my brakes. But my mechanics told me that's not a problem for the last 4 stages....... and I trust my crew.
Based on the excellent job from my service crew I was able to deliver clean stages in SS09 - SS12.

Here some screenshots

M3 Take off....

and landing...

low rider

Many thanks again to the whole organisation team for the event and a fantastic magazine.

 

[Roy Magnes]

I did the final loop of stages today, and as usual these are the notes I made along the way.

ss09 - My phone rang, so I lost concentration and left the road after a jump and hit a fence. Looks like only cosmetical damage.

ss10 - Way too careful on this stage. I don't want to mess it up now.
ss11 - Either really worn tyres or knocked wheel geometry to blame - the understeer is getting a lot worse on this stage.

ss12 - Really struggeling for grip on this stage. Just glad to get to the finish.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Happy Birthday, Ole!

Thanks!!

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

As always, some screenshots from the event as well!

Sideways in the wet and muddy conditions. To be perfectly honest, I wish the whole rally was with these conditions, it was extremely fun with the M3! Also, I can't help it. While I didn't find any cool Polish sponsor (though, @Roland did!), this messy pink car has really grown on me. I like it!

Saving tyres where I can!

If you keep completely still, and stay silent, you may spot a rare pink BMW peeking out from it's safe space out in the wilderness!

On the last service I got to fix all the performance-related parts, except the exhaust! So that was a positive!

The BMW did look a bit sad afterwards though

All out on the finish on the last stage!

All in all a fine event. I lost 45-50 seconds from SS2-SS4 on mistakes, then a 5 sec penalty for a bit too long service after SS4. But even without that time loss I wouldn't have gained a single position in the rally. I never expected me to keep up the podium positions from Monte and Sweden when we got to the gravel or in the pure tarmac event that is coming up. So I can't complain with a possible top 5

RDRC-Boss out!

 

[EG Racing]

Hi,
Summary of my participation in Poland:
ss1 and ss2 I start with caution and looking to pick up the pace of competition........
ss3 disaster is coming (I puncture a tire with a stone, one minute penalty) and I think I don't have any kind of scoring option.
ss4 continues the disaster, reaching the goal collided with a tree and several parts of the car are broken.
ss5 to be able to repair the car I come out with a 25 second penalty ......... 20th in the qualification.
ss6-ss12 I try to relax and concentrate and I reach the end in position 10 with 8 hours to go to finish the rally.
In the end quite happy........
Waiting for Spain, the home rally.
Regards!

 

[bogani]

I had to nurse my car through the long stage before the first service with a very very sick engine. After that I told myself that I would keep it together for the rest of the rally. Let's just say that did not go to plan.
A few spins and a haybale later I started SS11 where I misheard a note and rolled heavily. Once again my radiator was busted and the engine light smirked at me ahalf way through SS11. With an engine producing a worse cough for every kilometer I was absolutely certain I would do a Sainz just before the finish at SS12 but my god, it held together. Slow but across the line I went!

Must have been a tough rally though as I'm sitting 10th in the R5 class even after all this :O

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Must have been a tough rally though as I'm sitting 10th in the R5 class even after all this :O

Yup. The best is still the best and so on, but there might be some interesting results in this rally!

 

[C-R.17]

Sometimes, being slow is the best prevention for terminal damage. Also, the crew asked if I'd test the structural integrity of the roof and roll cage while out on track, so I obliged.

 

[xminxG]

All done.
28th currently, had a few mistakes and had a severely damaged engine for the 4 final stages.
Happy that i got to the end and manage to finish mid pack,

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

^^ that's basically my race report, except for me sitting 29th in class atm. Started the second leg in good cheer and with a fully repaired lancia, on stage6 midway through i clipped a tree with the rear which sent the car violently spinning around head on into the next tree, puncture and other stuff bent as well. there was a bug as i could not repair the puncture even though i had taken two spares, trying in vain to fix the tire and completing the stage on the rim cost me over a minute at final service i could get a lot repaired so i was in good spirits for the last leg. This lasted all of 2 min. until i totally misjudged the strength of my brakes and slammed into one of those haybale chicanes. radiator broken, engine pretty soon turned red and i had two long and one normal stage still to go. so, as in the last two rallies, i was no longer racing but slouched home, losing 1-3 mins each stage, especially the 16k stage was a lesson in humility. you gotta admire the Polish fans, though, cheering me on till the end!

thx Ole and team, another great event, it's just me being consistently too dumb to finish in better shape

 

[MartinVRS]

Wow this didn't go well. I don't know how, but I managed to have a worse rally than Argentina. At least at no point I felt I had a chance there.
Yet again I didn't prep too much for the event to be honest, but I got a nice base setup for the car with a little help of the internets. I would have never guessed you need stiff dampers and springs for these roads.
With the Impreza dialled in I rolled up to the start line with no real expectation to be fair. I never got to like these bouncy high speed stages, but with the car a lot more planted I started to enjoy it a bit during practice runs. Apparently got way too comfortable, as I had a spin again with just a kilometre in. Not a great start. My first real clean stage was SS03 if I recall correctly (went through this in one go, it's a bit of a blur). On stage 8 things got worse, I smashed the car up real bad after understeering into a tree just a minute in. I even thought about retiring at this point, but gathered all my will and drove about 12kms to the finish on 3 wheels and a rim. Lost more than 3 minutes on that stage, and lost all hope of catching the group of drivers ahead of me. Picked up another 10 seconds in penalties after the repairs, and went out onto the final leg.
At this point I just wanted to make it to the end without more mistakes. I did, but not without further errors. Luckily nothing car breaking this time, but curses were flying left and right at this point, not just grass and upturned rocks. For some reason I couldn't keep out of trouble. The inconsistent pace notes didn't help either. Some of them were late even with the calls set to earliest, and other times they were so early I slowed down for right 3 only to realize I'm at the previous corner and the right 3 is still 200 meters away. Shame, as I felt my pace was really good between the excursions and 360s I was pulling.
On the bright side I got my cockpit FOV dialled in, and this was the first rally I drove in the actual cockpit view instead of the dash or bonnet cam. (not a fan of the Codies cockpit cams, and avoided it so far). Maybe that was behind my slightly faster pace, but to make sure, I will try some time trials tomorrow.
Anyways to sum it up, RD Rally Poland turned out to be quite a roller coaster, both literally and figuratively. I felt a good improvement in speed but took another step back in consistency. I can't help but feel that it could have been a points finish this time. Next round maybe?

Again congratulations to all the competitors, another gruelling rally down on the calendar. Did anyone actually finish this without any damage?

 

[Benutzername]

I heard that lots of drivers in my class had problems on the rally. As poland is not a rally I particularly like or have experience on, I decided to take a chill apporach. Basically drove without mistakes, but also slow. With this approach i slowly rose in the standings from P28 on stage 1 to P7 after the rally finished. Solid points again!

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Provisional Results are out! You can find them here!

As always, we have some unknown RaceNet-names, they will be listed in this post.
Drivers on list list, have until Wednesday 24th March 00:25 UTC to notify us about names to be included in final results. Names with an asterix was also unknown in the previous events and will be removed from RaceNet leagues if the driver(s) notify us.

Unrecognized RaceNet: António Santos
Unrecognized RaceNet: blade31887*
Unrecognized RaceNet: borister9
Unrecognized RaceNet: FinnKKristiansen*
Unrecognized RaceNet: geri122
Unrecognized RaceNet: Haugestad
Unrecognized RaceNet: kerem
Unrecognized RaceNet: Mário Castro*
Unrecognized RaceNet: Mick_Kra
Unrecognized RaceNet: moloch93220
Unrecognized RaceNet: RaidoMartin1996*
Unrecognized RaceNet: UnknowRacer*
Unrecognized RaceNet: williams6925**
Unrecognized RaceNet: williams6925**

* Will be removed from RaceNet League if not fixed/entered in the championship
** Will be disqualified regardless, for driving in more than one RaceNet League.

 

[Michael Springer]

God damn it. I could have easily finished the rally within the points in P12ish, even with a broken engine and slower speeds that my brake failure caused. I did now finish the rally, but in P27, because it took me over 17 minutes to finish SS12... because my engine decided that was a good timing to only go 40 instead 140 kph. That could've been many, many points...

 

[Paul McCluskey]

God damn it. I could have easily finished the rally within the points in P12ish, even with a broken engine and slower speeds that my brake failure caused. I did now finish the rally, but in P27, because it took me over 17 minutes to finish SS12... because my engine decided that was a good timing to only go 40 instead 140 kph. That could've been many, many points...

That's why I will always try and finish no matter how slow I'm going, you never know how may will dnf

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

That's why I will always try and finish no matter how slow I'm going, you never know how may will dnf

Indeed. This rally it looked like there wouldn't be 20 points finishers in J-RDRC for a long long time!