If you’ve watched our videos, and have never watched the WRC or similar rallies on TV before, or maybe even if you have, the subject of this post might be gibberish to you. I’m going to try to break it down (at a very high level, as many people have gone deep into the nitty-gritty of how pacenotes work before), and give a general overview of how our system works.
For us, we’re fans of the 7-1+HP numbering system, and as a driver I’m a fan of numbers first. “Numbers first” simply means that I want to know how severe a corner is before I know whether it’s a left or a right; my reasoning is simple – I can see the road in front of me, so if there’s a point where the pace notes get called as we’re approaching the turn, I can look at the road, see where it goes, and know from the notes how fast I should be going to not kill us both. Pacenotes, are very personal, and can be completely different, or even subtly different between each driver/co-driver team.
The 7-1 numbering system is loosely based on a relationship between gearing and corners, most modern stage rally cars have 6 or 7 gears, and so a 7 right would be flat-out in top gear. In the stock version of the 7-1 system, a 1 is a hairpin, but, because we like to use hairpins as frames of reference, we call them separately and reserve 1′s for something that would need 1st gear but isn’t a 180° turn.
In our specific system, we tuned it a little for road cars; it’s more of a 5-1+HP system – since our cars only have 5 gears -, and we felt that up or down translation of corners was somewhat confusing; a 7R would be 5th gear and ~10°, a 6R would be 5th gear and ~20°, a 5R would be 4th gear and ~40°. It quickly got complicated doing the mental translation… even explaining it just now was too complicated to do without cross checking against some diagrams.
Back when we were first figuring out what pace-note style we wanted to adopt, we tried 1-9+HP; 1=10°, 9=90°. This was fine, but equally confusing, as I was never particularly good at geometry in school, and visualizing 20° or 30° has never been a key part of my skill-set, which is somewhat funny given that I can fly – in flying at least, you have instruments to refer to.
So, the simplest way of understanding our system, is to translate the numbers to the gearbox, and equate that to a speed estimate; it also means that we’re in the correct gear for the exit of the corner too. The L or R quite simply denotes the direction the corner goes in. Right = R and Left = L. Simple.
Alright, so, that’s the small numbers and direction covered, what about the bigger numbers? Sticking to our subject as an example:
2R 50 means “2 Right followed by 50 meters” before the next thing that you need to worry about. 50 meters isn’t very long, and is usually the bare minimum unless we’re going through a series of things that aren’t close enough together to call for using one of the other methods to link them.
Got all that? Good. So, while we’re on the subject of distances between things – corners are not the only thing we need to worry about, there are also crests, jumps, fords, etc -, let’s cover the terminology for if these obstacles are close together; there are two: and (a) and into (->). Into tends to mean less than 50m but there’s a bit of a gap between the two obstacles. And simply means it’s immediately, so a 3L a 2R would mean a 3 Left followed immediately by a 2 Right… whereas a 3L into 2R would mean a 3 Left followed by a small gap then a 2 Right.
Other words and symbols are used too, if we’re unsure whether a corner is one thing or another and don’t want to find out when we get there, then it’ll be suffixed with the word ‘maybe’ (?), which simply means “be careful around this one”.
Still with me here? Okay, excellent, because I’m about to confuse you further.
Tightens, Opens, Plus and Minus. In our system, Tightens and Opens refers more to the road itself, and what happens during the corner (where the apex or apexes are), rather than that degree of the corner as a whole, whereas Plus and Minus loosely translate to go easy on this one, or keep your foot the floor (a 2L- would be between a 1 and 2, and a 2L+ would be between a 2 and a 3). Illustrations of what Tight/Open corners look like are below:
That’s pretty much all there is to it, obviously there are other features, crests – meaning something less than a jump, usually a rise in the road you can’t see beyond; think hidden dips -, jumps – which are obvious -, and many other hazards too numerous to mention. I’ll leave you now with the finally cut and uploaded video of Part 2 (if you were paying attention you’ve already seen this, but, this one has timings!), and a picture of what our map looked like after we’d scoured it for data, along with Azemute’s book full of notes.
Got any questions about pace-notes? Do you rally? Leave us a message in the comments!
In case you were wondering, and skipped straight to the bottom, the subject says:2 Right, 50 meters, 3 Left Maybe and 2 Right Plus over Bridge into this post!
