What I wanted to know was simple: how to drive a manual without breaking it, since repairs are expensive and every piece of advice I got was b.s. So I called up a rally champion and found out what will actually blow up your car in the space of an afternoon, and what will keep it running just about forever.
An older BMW 3 Series can be driving bliss, but if you’re not a German car stan, you may not know your E30s from your E36s. Lucky for you, the Team O’Neil Rally School is here to help with this super detailed guide to the most popular 3 series generations for racing and what you need to look for when you buy and fix…
Team O’Neil Rally School shared a video recently about the differences between braking with two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive, but people complained the test methods were unfair. So, the school tested it again, and drove home their surprising point: A 4WD system can actually brake better than a 2WD one.
Rally racing is its own discipline, different from most other motorsports in that it isn’t all about power and, as a new driver, you’re certainly not going to feel as in control as you expected. That makes it tricky to choose a car if you’re not familiar with the style of racing.
“We’ve been working for 20 years now with different...kind of elements of government personnel,” former two-wheel drive national rally champion Wyatt Knox explains, “that I’ve signed a lot of things and I would disappear if I told you who they were.”
For car enthusiasts, a manual transmission is always the answer. But when it comes to off-road enthusiasts, that’s not always the case. That’s because automatics can actually be a huge benefit in the rough stuff, as the folks from the Team O’Neil Rally School point out in this video.
The Ford Focus RS has a second electronic brain in its butt, which it needs to control its new all-wheel-drive system. Sometimes this brain gets confused, and this has some consequences.
A few weeks ago my coworker Mike Ballaban and I got to learn the most hardcore driving technique I can possibly imagine. We learned what to do if your driver gets killed.
We recently got our hands on a Ford Focus RS to see if the much-ballyhooed Drift Mode is actually any faster than the car’s more normal high-performance Track Mode, or if Drift Mode was just a bunch of pointless powersliding. As it turns out, on loose surfaces, Drift Mode is way, way, way faster than we expected.
Racing in rallying means dealing with shit that any sane driver would avoid: jumps, stumps, rocks, ruts, all taken flat out. Over the years, rally suspension has grown to be about the best suspension in racing, and here’s a video explaining how it all works.
Want to be a rally driver? It just got cheaper.
Rally wannabes and Ken Block disciples will now be able to buy a Ford-blessed kit that turns their Fiesta into a race-ready machine, complete with 40% power boost. There's now more than one way to build a flying car.
Ford has given 43 of the European-spec Fiesta hatchbacks used in the Fiesta Movement to the Team O'Neil Rally School in Dalton, New Hampshire. $495 gets you one day behind the wheel with professional instruction. Anybody else smell a bargain?
