Second Attempt at Tarmac Rallying in Taiwan

So this was our second attempt at tarmac rallying in Taiwan. The first round in DaWu went so well that we thought we might as well take part in all 6 championship races this year and see if we can't finish the season in the top 3. Seeing as we had committed to completing the championship, we needed to bring our 2005 Subaru Impreza GD WRX up to spec.

Our brake and coilover setup remained the same as round 1; Front 330x32mm 6-pots, rear 330x28mm 4-pots, both with 0.45u 600C race pads, and PB coilovers with pillowball mounts and F8kg R6kg spring rates. The road wasn't too bumpy, so we set the damping to a medium setting 17 clicks front, and 12 clicks rear. That way we had some room to harden or soften the ride depending on how the first stage went. We set the ride height to the Impreza's OEM specifications as there was no need for raised suspension on this road.

We also squeezed an extra 50whp out of the EJ205 engine bringing it up 330whp, which is really more than enough for tarmac rallying. We did this by upgrading the fuel injectors to the 565cc EJ25 version, new fuel pump, boost control solenoid set to 1.3bar, and an ECU remap courtesy of expert Subaru tuner Les Sharp. Being one of only a few people in Taiwan using opensource software, he was able to get the most out of our latest upgrades, and after 15 hours of data logging and mapping we were confident that we had a good setup. In addition to that, we installed a new set of spark plugs and ignition coils as they were starting to show some wear. Finally, we invested in a set of Federal 595R semi-slick race tyres to replace the road tyres we used in the last round.

The results were fantastic, we were getting more boost coming out of the bends at 3000rpm and the new tyres gave us enough grip to keep the back end in check with the extra power (most of the time). The only thing letting us down was the standard 5 speed WRX gearbox. The next job on our to-do list is change the final gear ratio so that we're at higher rpm's when cornering and have instant boost at the pedal, but we'll come back to that later.

On Friday afternoon we arrived in TouCheng on the north east coast of Taiwan and co-driver Nick Gysbers got to work writing our pace notes for the first stage on Saturday morning. Embracing his role, it took 6 drafts before he was 100% satisfied with the final copy. The road conditions were a bit different from the last round in DaWu. It was an uphill climb along a narrow and twisting road. Almost every corner was blind, several of which were tightening hairpins leading to harsh drops down the mountainside. Let's just say we were slightly concerned about the road conditions.

After a fairly decent night's sleep, and not too many beers (just for the nerves), it was race day 1...

There were around 160 entrants for round 2 of the TRRC, and 11 in our class, 4WD street car. That is almost double the number of vehicles that entered last round, so we had our work cut out for us! We set off on our first stage at 9:29am on Saturday morning. The road had actually been swept the day before so the surface was excellent, there wasn't too much debris on the road and the rain had held out so we got some nice traction with the new tyres.

We finished our first of 4 stages without too much drama, and came back with a time of 5 minutes 38 seconds. We had no idea if that was a good time or not because we hadn't seen anyone else's time sheets by that point. We didn't have any mechanical issues to repair after the first stage, so we had 4 hours to wait around until our final stage of the day at 14:29.

To be honest, I would have rather just done the second stage straight away rather than bake in the 37C heat for the next 4 hours. Being from the UK, my body just can't take the heat and humidity experienced during the Taiwanese summers. By the time we were ready to start our 2nd stage I must have sweated around 4 litres of liquid and was just about ready to pass out.

Anyway, no rest for the wicked, it was time to get buckled up and ready for stage 2. Like I said, we weren't sure how our time on the first stage compared to the other competitors in our group, so we tried to maintain the same pace. It turned out we had done a 5 minutes 33 seconds, which was 5 seconds faster; this was probably down to there being a bit more rubber laid down on the road. Either way, we were fairly satisfied with day one.

We finally had a chance to check the time sheet on Saturday night, and we discovered that we were currently in 4th place out of 11. The driver in 3rd place had beaten us on both the first and second stage which meant the only way we had a chance to grab 3rd position was to beat him on the 3rd and 4th stages to match him on points, and hope that our total time was lower than his.

We were 8 seconds slower on SS1 and only 1 second slower on SS2, so there wasn't much difference between the 2 cars. We only needed to squeeze a little more out of the car to beat his times, so in a last ditch effort we increased the tyre pressure to 38psi, and turned the coilover damping all the way up to 30 clicks front and rear, the hardest setting!

After 5 hours sleep and a few more beers (again, only for the nerves of course), we got up and headed down for day 2...

The skies were blue and it hadn't rained a drop overnight, which was good news for