So you want to be a rally driver

You'll need commitment, skill, bravery and deep pockets, says ex-British Rally Champion and driver coach David Higgins

Before we start, I'd like to take this chance to point out that you don't just decide to become a world rally championship driver. You'd be amazed at the number of people who call our rally school and say: "Hmm, I've decided on a career change. Now, I can't decide whether to be a racing driver or a rally driver, so I'm coming to your school to take a look..." No you're not. We're busy. We're all washing our hair.

If you're serious about going all the way in this sport, it's something you live and breathe. Not something you decide on a whim. Okay, so you are that person. Here's the basics of how to do it. By the way, this is the paper version - if you want to do it for real, check out davidhigginsrally.com.

Getting started

If you're going to be a rally driver, there are some prerequisites you'd better make sure you have. Being brave is the obvious one. You'll also need complete belief in your own ability. From a sporting point of view, you'll also need that burning desire to be better than anybody else.

Allied to that, it's best if you come with some kind of motorsporting pedigree. Karting and time on a motorbike would be good. Both disciplines are good at making you braver than you might be at an early age. The motocross thing is also useful - being on a loose surface, it teaches you about throttle control, finding grip, using traction and, of course the basic requirement of good balance.

Transferring the car's weight to the front wheels helps braking and improves grip on turn-in © Ebrey/LAT

Brakes

When you drive on the road, you can go for quite a while without touching the brake pedal. That's not going to be the case in the stages. You'll use the brakes for much more than just slowing the car down - it's about getting the weight transferred and getting the car set up for a corner.

One of the first things you have to learn is the idea of two-stage braking. So many people jump in their car, hammer it up to the first corner, stamp on the brakes and are then surprised when the car locks up and goes off the road.

The first touch of the brake pedal should be a softer one to move the weight and the wheels. This will give you better traction under braking; with that done, you then brake harder and scrub the speed off.

The weight transfer side of things is the way to keep the car stable through the corner. For example, in a fast corner you don't want the back of the car to be sliding. To stop this, you need to be more progressive with the brakes, keeping the rear bolted to the road. For a slow corner you need to keep the brakes on longer to keep weight on the front wheels to help turn in.

Throttle

Once a driver has his braking sorted out, the throttle pedal is quite straightforward. There are two general rules: when you come off the throttle to go for the brakes, come off it 100 per cent. Never feather the throttle when you're backing off - it's a pointless comfort thing. And when you're back on it, don't just stamp on it, feather it and feel what the car's doing all the time.

Steering

Hold the steering wheel near the spokes and keep your hands in the same place. That's a fairly rudimentary piece of advice, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't do it and start sliding the wheel through their hands in a stage.

Keeping your hands in the same place means you know exactly when you have the front wheels straight and when you can apply the power coming out of a corner. The level of steering input for a rally car is very small.

If you watch in-car footage of the best drivers in the world, you'll rarely see them pulling armfuls of lock. Remember that every inch of steering you put into a corner, you've got to use double the amount to correct a slide.

When the car's pointed this way, pull the handbrake © Ebrey/LAT

Handbrake

Running straight on from the steering debate, using the handbrake is a great way of lessening the required steering input. Most of the handbrake action in a stage will come at a hairpin bend, when you'd expect to have to use the most lock to get through the corner. It doesn't - and shouldn't - have to be that way.

One of the most fundamental errors I see all the time with making the handbrake turn is drivers pulling the handbrake before they've started the turn. Inevitably, these are the same drivers who haven't come in with enough speed and, after a bit of flailing arm action and foot still on the brake, the car bogs down and they grind to a halt looking a bit of a tit in front of the same bunch of spectators they'd been hoping to impress with their skid.

It's not complicated. Brake for the corner a tiny bit earlier to give yourself preparation time, then dial in some lock, so you've turned into the corner, hop off the throttle (don't forget to dip the clutch in a rear-drive car) and yank the handbrake.

Once the car's sliding, get off the handbrake and try to get the steering wheel straight again. Once the wheel's straight, get back on the power. This is assuming you have gone through the corner - obviously you don't want to be giving it the large one if your nose is still facing the bank on the inside.

Sliding

This is an element of rally driving that sorts the men from the boys. There's the kind of driver who'll be on the brakes 150 yards before they should be giving it the big sideways up the road one way and then the other to show off to the crowd in an effort to show how on-the-limit they are. That's just silly. And it'll crucify your stage times.

If you want to show the crowd how on-the-limit you are, then, er, get on the limit. If you're coming into a corner and braking as late as humanly possible, the car's right on the edge of its grip and, believe me, this will show on the outside.

You'll be more spectacular than anybody through a corner, but you won't have time to appreciate it - or the all-but-guaranteed applause from the crowd - because you're so involved in keeping the car on the road. Your reward comes at the end of the stage.

Some of the time, sliding is the last thing you want to be doing in a rally car. Generally, when you're sideways, you're not going forwards and you're losing time. At other times, sliding the car - particularly on gravel - is an effective way of getting the car set up for a corner and scrubbing off speed.

It's quite easy as a driver coach to see who's got it and who hasn't when it comes to sliding. You have two types of driver: the one who is ahead of the car, knows the slide is coming and is ready for it (he's the winner) and the one who is continually caught out by the car and is usually found losing time with the slide or in a ditch (he's not the winner).

Pace notes

It's difficult to overstate the importance of a good set of pace notes for a driver. And this is something you can be out on the road getting sorted as soon as you've passed your driving test. You can do this at 30mph on every journey you make.

There are two ways of making notes: descriptive and numerical. The descriptive system does what it says on the tin - it describes the road ahead through phrases such as 'flat' or 'fast' meaning a slight corner, or 'square' meaning a 90-degree bend. This works well, but there is more for a co-driver to read and more words for the driver to take in. The numerical system is simpler and generally goes from one to six with a gear-related number. A call of 'six right' is usually a top-gear bend.

There are two things to add here. The first is that practice is great, but you'll need to get out on an event as soon as possible and put your hard work to the test. The other is to keep watching the world champions in-car and keep trying to learn. Not so long ago, I combined the two systems. I now have one-to-four for slower corners and then descriptive above that. This means when I hear descriptive I know it's all quick stuff coming up and I need to be pushing on.

The route to the top

Get yourself into the best one-make championship you can afford as soon as possible. This is definitely the best way to progress. All too often you see youngsters come along and buy a really expensive car; they run it for a season, but then run out of money the following year and fade away.

When I started out, doing the Peugeot Challenge almost paid for itself if you were winning. It's not like that any more, but one-make series remain the best place to judge your competitiveness. If you're fighting with the same bunch of drivers all the time, it's easy to keep track of your own development.

If you buy a random car, you might drive badly against a poor field to finish third one week, then drive brilliantly against a strong field and finish 20th a week later.

Once you're out of the one-make thing, it has to be the British Rally Championship, then the Production Car WRC. Some drivers try to miss out on the BRC, but it doesn't work. They get to the world level and get blown away.

The cost

Prepare yourself. This is not going to be cheap. To go from bottom to top in a few years is going to be past a million. A couple of years in a good one-make series is going to knock a hole in £30,000. Then at least two years in the BRC - at £100,000 a time - is going to sting a bit.

And then, finally, you get to the Production series. You'll need a minimum of two years at that level before you can make your impact and hope to go on and achieve the final aim of becoming a works driver. One year in Production is £400,000 to do the job properly. You never know, you might be able to get a discount for two years-plus with a team. But anyway, there's a cool million gone in five or six years.

David Higgins was talking to David Evans