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Team O'Neil in the Press <Back | Car and Driver, June 2002 | |||||
My
Left Foot
O'Neil started his school in 1996 after 15 years of rally driving and five years of part-time instruction. What you first notice about him is that he's not the typical lithe, compact, brooding racing driver. He's more linebacker, with a broad head, thick neck, powerful shoulders, and a quick smile. Before O'Neil taught driving, he ran a garage, but he definitely looks as if he grew up hauling logs out of the White Mountains - the main local industry. When he says "kah" in his thick New England accent, it sounds very much like Click and Clack of NPR's Car Talk fame. On the first morning of the rally racing school, four students (maximum class size is six) met Tim O'Neil for breakfast at a local diner where he explained the major driving technique he was going to teach us. It's called left-foot breaking, and it involves using that particular foot to operate the throttle. Driving schools will order students to perform most of the braking before the turn. Here, we were instructed to do the opposite: Turn first, then apply the brakes, but don't lift off the gas. This is like asking a righty to sign anautograph left-handed. For 99 percent of us, left-foot braking is a kind of an automotive heresy, the equivalent of telling a kid to talk to strangers. The idea is to use the brake to prevent the front end from washing out (understeer) and to coax the rear end to swing wide (oversteer). Basically, you're trying to fishtail the car around a turn. If you've ever watched a rally, you've seen those drivers, sliding their cars through turns. "Think of the brakes as you would a boat rudder," suggests O'Neil. A word of caution: After you've read this, do not run out and give it a go the first dirt road you come to. The brief explanation offered here does not qualify as a substitute for the intricacies taught in the course. The students ranged from experienced drivers to a retired 62-year-old baker who simply announced, "I never slid a car before." O'Neil teaches rally techniques and offers a one-day basic car-control class for $200, as well as training for security guards. Two instructors are on hand, O'Neil and Chuck Long, and one of them is always in the car with a student on the skidpad. By 11 that morning we were doing our first exercise on a 200-foot flat skidpad covered with gravel. For this introduction to left-foot braking, we drove in circles and were told to hold the steering wheel at a fixed angle, keeping our right foot pressed on the gas, left on the brake - using it to tuck in the front end and tighten the car's turn. Although at first we all instinctively lifted off the gas as the car picked up speed and started to push wide, after a few laps we got the feel for the technique. Every half-hour or so, we stopped so the skidpad could be regarded and watered. After a break for lunch and a chalk talk in the rustic log-cabin classroom, we moved onto a larger gravel pad. This one is adjacent to the skidpad but is much larger, about 300 yards long and 50 yards wide. An offset slalom course awaited. The slalom is the workhorse of O'Neil's rally school, and by the end of the three days we were all driving it in our sleep. We spent the rest of the afternoon running the slalom nearly continuously, both solo and with an instructor riding shotgun. We were driving four cars - a Volkswagen Golf and two Jettas, all 10-year-old front-drivers, and a four-wheel-drive Audi 4000. The Golf is rally prepared, with a full safety cage, racing seats, and stiffer springs and shocks. The other cars are stock except for knobby tires. The Golf feels surprisingly sprightly, and the tail swings out with minimal encouragement. The heavier Jettas and Audis are more reluctant to do so.  The
slalom demonstrates the reason rally drivers go through turns sideways.
Using my finest road-racing technique, I washed the front end at every
cone. Swinging the tail, using left-foot braking, I was able to pivot
the car around the cone without losing speed.This technique of sliding the car is not as easy as it looks. And I discovered that when it comes to left-foot braking and slides, speed is your friend. At less than 30 mph, applying the brakes - with your foot on the gas, of course - while turning only slows the car. Above 30mph, there's enough momentum to allow the braking to shift weight forward and cause the front tires to bite harder and the rears to get loose without slowing much. Since you're turning, the unweighted rear drifts wide. We started day two where we left off - on the slalom. Thankfully, there were no objects to hit on the vast slalom area, so we could drive fearlessly. (I can't imagine trying to learn on the typically narrow dirt roads that make up rally courses.) O'Neil adds accident-avoidance exercise and teaches a technique called the pendulum turn that induces oversteer in low-speed corners. By day three, we were all feeling like experts, but we spent the morning refining our technique and going faster. It was on that last day that I had what I'll call my "moment," an instant when all the instructions sunk in and I began to arc the car quickly and gracefully through the turns. During the three days, all the students would have a moment. You can see when it happens as the student emerges from the car with a broad smile and the sensation of doing something not only skilled but also as adrenaline pumping as bungee jumping. At each "moment", O'Neil is somehow right there, listening to the student's experience, laughing, and obviously thrilled at having successfully passed on his knowledge. In the afternoon, O'Neil sets us loose on a portion of the logging roads that snake through the woods - real-life rally roads, with trees, rocks, and ditches lining the sides. It's here that all of us got a feel for the commitment needed to drive fast on a gravel road. There's a certain speed dead spot that's fast enough to cause the front end to wash out but too slow to make the tail swing, and it's then that you have to gather your nerve and simply go faster. Once you do, the car pivots around the slippery corners with astonishing velocity. If I had opted for the $4150 four-day course, the next day would have been spent slowly on the logging roads. But now I can exercise the option many of the 250 students have who go through the school each year - going back for more. Team O'Neil Car Control Center
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<Back | Car and Driver,
June 2002
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