- 5,987
Good evening GTP.
This thread will be along the same lines as my Ferrari Festival thread, so if you liked that format (writeup + a bunch of photos from a fun motoring event), please stick around. If you for some odd reason don't like grassroots motorsports/photography or still have dialup, then you should leave.
This time, the main event was focussed around a more crowd-interactive motorsport called rally. My experience began 2 years ago, when a friend of mine (924superwagen - a thinly-contributing GTP member) found out that 3 hours from my house, they had a rally stop in the Canadian Championship circuit called Defi Duhamel/Ste Agathe. He being a rally and motorsports enthusiast, and me also being into that sort of thing, he invited me to go along to spectate, sort of as a birthday present, as the event always follows my big day by a couple sunsets. Every year, something comes up and I can't make it, but he always comes back with smiles and memorabilia from the event.
This year, I finally got it together and confirmed my participation for Saturday's rally. The only condition being we had to leave at 5:30 in the morning, which is pretty bad. To make things worse, I was out carousing Friday night, because celebrating an 18th birthday is an order in Quebec.
Luckily I woke on time, also somehow packed my new Sony A100 digital SLR camera - my tool for documenting the day's happenings, and also a Canon Elura 80 digital camcorder - for Superwagen to film the day. Half an hour into the trip, on some A-roads, I embarassingly but politely ask my friend for the use of the side of the highway to leave some roadside DNA.
Upon arrival at 8AM, we sit ourselves down in a school-bus-gone-VIP-shuttle-bus that was going to take us on-stage to view 4 of the rallys 13 legs (some of which were driven the previous night). I was sooooooo tired, which gave a chance for Superwagen to read up on the day and to properly plan things out. We arrive in one piece, and set up our cameras for getting shots of the first stage that we would be watching.
Stage 1
We set up on a middle-fast sweeper (roughly 100km/h?). Our first taste of actual car action came with the Civic Zero car. The tripple-, double- and single-zero cars are like a pre-sweep of the course, to make sure everything's fine and good and nobody is in the way. Once that car finishes the stage, they start the rally by releasing the racers in one-minute intervals.
The first car came through a dozen minutes later. A fully custom Hyundai Tiburon 4WD.
This Evo 4 came through second, which was exciting and surprising:
The surprise, you may be asking?
I got hit in the head with a decent-sized rock, Superwagen got a golfball in the shin and my a100 got a nice big rock on the focus ring. I would've been devestated if that'd hit glass. This is how we learn.
More open-class AWD badboys. The first one gives you a good idea of the size of the rocks that they were pitching at us.
One of my favorites for the day, a GT Four.
Along came a Golf 1.8T Syncro
Superwagen's a big VW-head, and almost all of my VW pics got killed. I am still getting used to the camera, so a lot of the shots barely turned out.
Then came some of the slower Production-class cars. They were slower, but I don't think there was a single un-entertaining car out there. Loads of fun for the watchers and participants.
I like the way this picture turned out. Definitely one of my favorites of the lot.
The Corolla put up a decent fight as well
Soon after came this beast. Air-cooled (obviously) late-70s Porker 911. This thing made the noise and swung the tail. He lost soooo much valuable time because of mad oversteer. A lot of fun to watch, and I bet a handful on the track.
Going straight for the cameramen with no opposite lock. Aaaaaah beautfiul.
Then to get a different angle, we ran across the corner to the apex, but only one car went by after we made it.
Nothing else passed until the final 99 car (like the Zero cars, but at the end) and then the Sweep (to record DNFs and pull people from the ditches), so we made some sandwiches and started scouting out somewhere to watch the next leg from.
Stage 2
The corner we originally at was part of an intersection, where the cars would be coming from the second time and using the latter half of the first stage. We found a nice secluded section across the way from our old "seats" and got ready for the action.
The tripple and double Zeros passed, then we heard the Honda ploughing through the countryside, pop-pop-pop down into second and fly around into view. Notice the suspected broken camber link in back. The Zero retired after this section and was replaced by a funny Jeep Commander.
Then Tibs leading the pack again
We were originally standing roughly where the roostertail is in this shot for the first round (by that "Kiosque"). The cars for the first stage were coming around from the left of that picture.
Nice graphics on this Impreza.
An Evo from a local shop.
This was a factory-backed Suzuki. Don't laugh, the car always had the tightest line and was often airborne.
This Integra sounded by far the best out there. Very smooth and high revving...
The Celica again
I like this following picture.
Both these two Imprezas a bit off of the desired line.
2 wheels baby!
And it's tradition for Superwagen and I to heckle Fords.
Notice how all of the other cars at this point on the exit are straight? Yeah, well the Porsche was swinging around like mad. Excellent.
This guy went to England's WRC event, and had some good stories to tell. He likes the Subbies.
Here is Superwagen filming, with an AK Rallysport shirt on. Visit his (our?) website - www.akrallysport.com
Some regional car that we didn't see much of...
Then there was this Paseo that apparently slid too much and stuffed it somewhere. They had to patch things up real quick and zip-tie a net inplace of the smashed out glass.
And that was the last of em. The 99 car was driven by the head organiser of the event, also worked a Chevy lot. He took the Avalanche demo car for the weekend
Stage 3
This time around we moved farther than the other side of the road. We started walking to another point where Superwagen had spectated the year before. On our way over, a kind Jetta TDI owner stopped and gave us a lift (his wife kept telling him to slow down, he's not in the rally!). We told him to stop before our original planned spot because we passed through a beautiful downhill-to-double-crest section and deemed it the perfect location. We set up our cooler for food, and eyed out a big stack of de-forested logs, standing about 25 feet up, 6 feet from the side of the road. Inspecting it further, we found an easy way up and got ready for the action. We waited up there for a good half hour before the Zeros swept through and we were ready for action.
Again, the Tiburon was first through, flying down the hill.
The cars come roaring through, lift off a bit, gas over the first crest, lifting off the ground before climbing up the next hill with less speed and hitting the brakes for the turn on the other side.
We had a lot of fun shooting this section. It was the highlight of the trip for me.
And my favorite shot of the day, the beautful-sounding Type R. Finally got my settings down good for one shot, and it was worth it I think.
There was this very disappointing Mitsubishi Lancer running all day. Probably the boringest car out there.
The Porker aiming for the lip. Unfortunately he pulled off pretty hard to avoid losing the tail on the right-hander down into the trough between crests.
Stage 4
On our way over to another favorite spot, we met up with the remnants of a unsuccessful rally team. The team had hit a rock really hard in an earlier stage and couldn't go on, so the co-driver and some friends were just spectating for the rest of the day. We pearched ourselves next to another crest in the forest, where cars were reportedly getting decent air in previous stages. This was the last stage (stage 13 actually) so people were either satisfied with their positions, just happy with a finish, or trying to get those needed seconds to gain a rank. Most people took it easy, but it was obvious some teams were really booting it to get some seconds over the competition.
We waited around for a long time at that little crest, and finally the cars echoed through the countryside. Unfortunately, capturing pictures here was harder than expected (even other photogs were sharing in my frustration). I still managed to salvage some of the shots...
The Tiburon coming around the turn
This car was one of the ones gunning it for rank. Lining up for the jump and...
... liftoff.
You can't say you see that very often:
Trying the other side of the road, I wasn't very much more successful, partially because I was roughly 5 feet from passing cars (I got hit by some kicked rocks)
The Porsche again showing us that he needs all of the grip in the back he can get.
The repaired Paseo limping to the line for the finish.
Post Race
Duhamel is a one-stopsign town. After the race, all the cars go down to the "community centre" and park where the whole town comes out to greet the machines and their drivers. It was a good oppurtunity to get some shots of the cars. Awards were given out, but we were burned out by late-afternoon so we missed a lot of that.
The Tiburon being the overall winner claimed their champaign and prizes.
The 911 resting from a day's work in the dirt.
The Pols driving the Lancer had their entire extended families out for support.
Alittle bit of danger during the day for the spectators, but the drivers look to be pretty safe in there...
The piping on the Golf was pretty interesting. The whole front end looked pretty clunky.
Man, not much is sexier than a really dirty rally car.
On the drive home, we enjoyed a sweet sunset and some excellent b-roads. A good way to close a great day.
Thanks for reading.
----------------
Well it's 1AM after editing and sifting through 800 pictures from 2 days, so I might as well give you all I've got in this one post.
Sunday afternoon I called up another friend who regularly participates in weekly drifting trackdays, again an automotive event I always miss because of one thing or another. This time I was free and the camera was ready for pictures. I didn't get to go out on track at all with him, but I did get to snap some pictures of the cars drifting, the "time-attack" cars, and some still shots of cars waiting to get on the track.
I love e30s, and there were three of them lapping the timed track, so I kind of took a bunch of shots of this M.
This 300HP Civic put up a mean fight on the track. No competition against the M3 mind you
For the Supra fans...
A random Skyline GT-R sitting around doing nothing at all. For some that's enough, though.
(not me, I like to see them get tossed).
The M3 warming the track up a bit
Around this time I headed over to the drifting track (oval + infield) to watch my friend drift. My camera battery was dying and I wasn't really feeling the photography at the time. I wish I had some wire cutters to get a good enough lens hole in the fencing, but no luck.
The track is definitely not well-suited for AE86s, only the best drivers can make the long sweeper
I'm diggin' the wheels on this Sil.
Some shameless promotion for my bud (yeah, he needs a new diff).
An e30 popped over from the timed track to try out this drifting thing... He caught on after not too long...
And to finish off the evening and this post, a beautiful MR2. Shame the sound wall is there though...
---------------
Well that concludes it. I took a good 700 pictures this weekend, and I had a good time. I hope you enjoy my pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.
They were all taken as jpg @ 10.2mp (roughly 3900x2600 pixels) with a Sony A100 DSLR through 18-70 glass. If anyone would like a picture, please specify which one and what size. If you're interrested in a specific car from the rally section, I can take a look if I have any more shots, but please refer to them by their number.
Enjoy!
(I won't be editing anything until tomorrow, so if there are any obvious mistakes, deal with it)
This thread will be along the same lines as my Ferrari Festival thread, so if you liked that format (writeup + a bunch of photos from a fun motoring event), please stick around. If you for some odd reason don't like grassroots motorsports/photography or still have dialup, then you should leave.
This time, the main event was focussed around a more crowd-interactive motorsport called rally. My experience began 2 years ago, when a friend of mine (924superwagen - a thinly-contributing GTP member) found out that 3 hours from my house, they had a rally stop in the Canadian Championship circuit called Defi Duhamel/Ste Agathe. He being a rally and motorsports enthusiast, and me also being into that sort of thing, he invited me to go along to spectate, sort of as a birthday present, as the event always follows my big day by a couple sunsets. Every year, something comes up and I can't make it, but he always comes back with smiles and memorabilia from the event.
This year, I finally got it together and confirmed my participation for Saturday's rally. The only condition being we had to leave at 5:30 in the morning, which is pretty bad. To make things worse, I was out carousing Friday night, because celebrating an 18th birthday is an order in Quebec.
Luckily I woke on time, also somehow packed my new Sony A100 digital SLR camera - my tool for documenting the day's happenings, and also a Canon Elura 80 digital camcorder - for Superwagen to film the day. Half an hour into the trip, on some A-roads, I embarassingly but politely ask my friend for the use of the side of the highway to leave some roadside DNA.
Upon arrival at 8AM, we sit ourselves down in a school-bus-gone-VIP-shuttle-bus that was going to take us on-stage to view 4 of the rallys 13 legs (some of which were driven the previous night). I was sooooooo tired, which gave a chance for Superwagen to read up on the day and to properly plan things out. We arrive in one piece, and set up our cameras for getting shots of the first stage that we would be watching.
Stage 1
We set up on a middle-fast sweeper (roughly 100km/h?). Our first taste of actual car action came with the Civic Zero car. The tripple-, double- and single-zero cars are like a pre-sweep of the course, to make sure everything's fine and good and nobody is in the way. Once that car finishes the stage, they start the rally by releasing the racers in one-minute intervals.
The first car came through a dozen minutes later. A fully custom Hyundai Tiburon 4WD.
This Evo 4 came through second, which was exciting and surprising:
The surprise, you may be asking?
I got hit in the head with a decent-sized rock, Superwagen got a golfball in the shin and my a100 got a nice big rock on the focus ring. I would've been devestated if that'd hit glass. This is how we learn.
More open-class AWD badboys. The first one gives you a good idea of the size of the rocks that they were pitching at us.
One of my favorites for the day, a GT Four.
Along came a Golf 1.8T Syncro
Superwagen's a big VW-head, and almost all of my VW pics got killed. I am still getting used to the camera, so a lot of the shots barely turned out.
Then came some of the slower Production-class cars. They were slower, but I don't think there was a single un-entertaining car out there. Loads of fun for the watchers and participants.
I like the way this picture turned out. Definitely one of my favorites of the lot.
The Corolla put up a decent fight as well
Soon after came this beast. Air-cooled (obviously) late-70s Porker 911. This thing made the noise and swung the tail. He lost soooo much valuable time because of mad oversteer. A lot of fun to watch, and I bet a handful on the track.
Going straight for the cameramen with no opposite lock. Aaaaaah beautfiul.
Then to get a different angle, we ran across the corner to the apex, but only one car went by after we made it.
Nothing else passed until the final 99 car (like the Zero cars, but at the end) and then the Sweep (to record DNFs and pull people from the ditches), so we made some sandwiches and started scouting out somewhere to watch the next leg from.
Stage 2
The corner we originally at was part of an intersection, where the cars would be coming from the second time and using the latter half of the first stage. We found a nice secluded section across the way from our old "seats" and got ready for the action.
The tripple and double Zeros passed, then we heard the Honda ploughing through the countryside, pop-pop-pop down into second and fly around into view. Notice the suspected broken camber link in back. The Zero retired after this section and was replaced by a funny Jeep Commander.
Then Tibs leading the pack again
We were originally standing roughly where the roostertail is in this shot for the first round (by that "Kiosque"). The cars for the first stage were coming around from the left of that picture.
Nice graphics on this Impreza.
An Evo from a local shop.
This was a factory-backed Suzuki. Don't laugh, the car always had the tightest line and was often airborne.
This Integra sounded by far the best out there. Very smooth and high revving...
The Celica again
I like this following picture.
Both these two Imprezas a bit off of the desired line.
2 wheels baby!
And it's tradition for Superwagen and I to heckle Fords.
Notice how all of the other cars at this point on the exit are straight? Yeah, well the Porsche was swinging around like mad. Excellent.
This guy went to England's WRC event, and had some good stories to tell. He likes the Subbies.
Here is Superwagen filming, with an AK Rallysport shirt on. Visit his (our?) website - www.akrallysport.com
Some regional car that we didn't see much of...
Then there was this Paseo that apparently slid too much and stuffed it somewhere. They had to patch things up real quick and zip-tie a net inplace of the smashed out glass.
And that was the last of em. The 99 car was driven by the head organiser of the event, also worked a Chevy lot. He took the Avalanche demo car for the weekend
Stage 3
This time around we moved farther than the other side of the road. We started walking to another point where Superwagen had spectated the year before. On our way over, a kind Jetta TDI owner stopped and gave us a lift (his wife kept telling him to slow down, he's not in the rally!). We told him to stop before our original planned spot because we passed through a beautiful downhill-to-double-crest section and deemed it the perfect location. We set up our cooler for food, and eyed out a big stack of de-forested logs, standing about 25 feet up, 6 feet from the side of the road. Inspecting it further, we found an easy way up and got ready for the action. We waited up there for a good half hour before the Zeros swept through and we were ready for action.
Again, the Tiburon was first through, flying down the hill.
The cars come roaring through, lift off a bit, gas over the first crest, lifting off the ground before climbing up the next hill with less speed and hitting the brakes for the turn on the other side.
We had a lot of fun shooting this section. It was the highlight of the trip for me.
And my favorite shot of the day, the beautful-sounding Type R. Finally got my settings down good for one shot, and it was worth it I think.
There was this very disappointing Mitsubishi Lancer running all day. Probably the boringest car out there.
The Porker aiming for the lip. Unfortunately he pulled off pretty hard to avoid losing the tail on the right-hander down into the trough between crests.
Stage 4
On our way over to another favorite spot, we met up with the remnants of a unsuccessful rally team. The team had hit a rock really hard in an earlier stage and couldn't go on, so the co-driver and some friends were just spectating for the rest of the day. We pearched ourselves next to another crest in the forest, where cars were reportedly getting decent air in previous stages. This was the last stage (stage 13 actually) so people were either satisfied with their positions, just happy with a finish, or trying to get those needed seconds to gain a rank. Most people took it easy, but it was obvious some teams were really booting it to get some seconds over the competition.
We waited around for a long time at that little crest, and finally the cars echoed through the countryside. Unfortunately, capturing pictures here was harder than expected (even other photogs were sharing in my frustration). I still managed to salvage some of the shots...
The Tiburon coming around the turn
This car was one of the ones gunning it for rank. Lining up for the jump and...
... liftoff.
You can't say you see that very often:
Trying the other side of the road, I wasn't very much more successful, partially because I was roughly 5 feet from passing cars (I got hit by some kicked rocks)
The Porsche again showing us that he needs all of the grip in the back he can get.
The repaired Paseo limping to the line for the finish.
Post Race
Duhamel is a one-stopsign town. After the race, all the cars go down to the "community centre" and park where the whole town comes out to greet the machines and their drivers. It was a good oppurtunity to get some shots of the cars. Awards were given out, but we were burned out by late-afternoon so we missed a lot of that.
The Tiburon being the overall winner claimed their champaign and prizes.
The 911 resting from a day's work in the dirt.
The Pols driving the Lancer had their entire extended families out for support.
Alittle bit of danger during the day for the spectators, but the drivers look to be pretty safe in there...
The piping on the Golf was pretty interesting. The whole front end looked pretty clunky.
Man, not much is sexier than a really dirty rally car.
On the drive home, we enjoyed a sweet sunset and some excellent b-roads. A good way to close a great day.
Thanks for reading.
----------------
Well it's 1AM after editing and sifting through 800 pictures from 2 days, so I might as well give you all I've got in this one post.
Sunday afternoon I called up another friend who regularly participates in weekly drifting trackdays, again an automotive event I always miss because of one thing or another. This time I was free and the camera was ready for pictures. I didn't get to go out on track at all with him, but I did get to snap some pictures of the cars drifting, the "time-attack" cars, and some still shots of cars waiting to get on the track.
I love e30s, and there were three of them lapping the timed track, so I kind of took a bunch of shots of this M.
This 300HP Civic put up a mean fight on the track. No competition against the M3 mind you
For the Supra fans...
A random Skyline GT-R sitting around doing nothing at all. For some that's enough, though.
(not me, I like to see them get tossed).
The M3 warming the track up a bit
Around this time I headed over to the drifting track (oval + infield) to watch my friend drift. My camera battery was dying and I wasn't really feeling the photography at the time. I wish I had some wire cutters to get a good enough lens hole in the fencing, but no luck.
The track is definitely not well-suited for AE86s, only the best drivers can make the long sweeper
I'm diggin' the wheels on this Sil.
Some shameless promotion for my bud (yeah, he needs a new diff).
An e30 popped over from the timed track to try out this drifting thing... He caught on after not too long...
And to finish off the evening and this post, a beautiful MR2. Shame the sound wall is there though...
---------------
Well that concludes it. I took a good 700 pictures this weekend, and I had a good time. I hope you enjoy my pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.
They were all taken as jpg @ 10.2mp (roughly 3900x2600 pixels) with a Sony A100 DSLR through 18-70 glass. If anyone would like a picture, please specify which one and what size. If you're interrested in a specific car from the rally section, I can take a look if I have any more shots, but please refer to them by their number.
Enjoy!
(I won't be editing anything until tomorrow, so if there are any obvious mistakes, deal with it)
Had a really good time looking and reading everything through.
great vid 
