I left last Sunday to go out east for a 4 day Team O'Neil school. I stayed with Andrew, sniper1rfa who lives out in Plymouth, MA but also has a house near Bath, NH which is about 45 minutes from O'Neil's. Andrew was one of the original Ziptie Rally members and helped build probably 90% of the SlowTI. My class didn't start till Tuesday so we hung around Plymouth for a few days - the weather was fantastic and the ocean was gorgeous! We left Monday afternoon and headed up to northern New Hampshire. Pretty much all the roads up there (white mountain area) are absolutely fantastic and we had a lot of fun tooling around in Andrew's impreza wagon (ps, this further solidified my opinion that the tokico dspecs are one of the best values out there. Andrew has that **** dialed in to a T. I knew they were good since I owned a set(and still have them as a back-up for the rally car) but after seeing how well they could carve on pavement and then work flawlessly on rough gravel roads... best strut out there dollar for dollar imo!). We met at the Hampton Inn in Littleton Tuesday morning and then caravan-ed to Team O'Neil's facility in Dalton. This is what you see at the school: I think half of new england's vw's are parked at Team O'Neil! The first day was a good amount of classroom time followed by a lot of fwd skidpad and slalom work on left foot braking. The Jettas rotate extremely well and I can see why VW's are a very popular 2wd rally platform. I met another DirtyImpreza member at the school - Sam (Jim_Rippy) has an 04 STI like me that he has built into a rally car (but lives by USRC/NASA events so he gets to use his turbo right away). He didn't have any place to stay so Andrew and I invited him back to stay with us. On the way back we saw a very strange accident. It appears the driver (old, no surprise lol) managed to cut across a rather large field and then plow into a stream. I won't really go into the details of the rest of the days but the general idea is working on various braking and rotating techniques in a variety of platforms (jetta's, gti's, quattro's, subaru's, bmw's). We did left foot braking, pendulum turns, straightline braking, trail braking, braking in the turn to name a few. Getting back to basics was a good thing for me. The STI's drivetrain is so good it really masks poor driving. It was also good to revisit rally lines - I noticed I started to stray from really following the proper line at the last few races whenever I started to get stressed. This is where we spent most of the time driving. The skidpad in the foreground and then the long straight and hill in the background A couple pics I shot on day 3 (I really didn't take too many, was awfully busy most of the time) this was actually a student's fwd impreza. Bill Lockwood was also there with his fiesta movement ford fiesta and they drove that quite a bit (even put rally tires on it - one didn't fully seat on the steelies so they had 3 tires at 28psi and one with 80psi lol!) beautiful time of year up in NH the fiesta movement guys took a ton of video, hopefully some of it will surface sooner or later! oh yea, riding in a quattro with a rough engine, Tim driving and four passengers is pretty crazy! Anyway, psyched for LSPR! a few additional pics here http://www.sieglerphoto.com/Car-events/rally/Team-ONeil-Rally-Schoo/9766044_fcR7B#P-1-20 -carl #171
:laugh: I wish. That property is couple million easy. My house *is* nice, but it's not beachfront. I have to walk, or even ride a bike.
You always know how to have fun. Obviously Tim O'neil has the best Rally school, but what did you like most and what did you find to be the most helpful in improving your rally driving experience? Thnx for sharing!
would now be a good time to try and do a MNSOC rallyX class maybe carl could impart some of the knowledge he had gained.
This is a brilliant idea! I just wish I'd thought of it first! Oh, wait . . . :biggrin: Seriously, though, I think it would be great if we could do another school this year, and if it's planned out far enough ahead of time I might even be able to be part of it.
I was told, a few years ago, that it had reached the point where TeamO was having to look outside of New England for their cars, as they'd bought everything within a few states (seriously!). Actually, the Jettas rotate like crap, and that's part of why they make a good learning car. The Golfs are much quicker to start rotating and easier to stop when you want. Small world. I met Aaron (who runs DI) at the class, and I didn't have a place to stay, so I slept on their hotel room floor. QFT! Yeah, when I went last year, a couple weeks later, it was literally impossible to find a hotel room in NH over the weekend. It's the peak of color up there and it's truly spectacular.
the best things is you get a lot of seat time. and it's not just normal seat time, it's seat time doing things right - you develop a lot of bad habits that can be hard to break without prolonged behind the seat instruction like you get at O'Neils. The variety of cars is also good. Even one quattro to the next will drive completely different so you learn to quickly adapt to not only the conditions but the car. yea another school would be fun to do - too bad we don't have the princeton location because that was really perfect with the building and the field. I saw the rig pretty much right when I arrived lol. I guess they keep CPD2 offsite at another shop.
On july third, that whole beach becomes one gigantic party. :biggrin: note: perspective not altered to change apparent size
That sound crazy fun! I would love to take this class. what do you do when the instructor are with other students? chill or do you get to drive on your own?
