Rallying Back To Ojibwe After Rolling Over – And Over – In Oregon By David Gee

When Rally America returns to the pine-filled forests of northern Minnesota for the Ojibwe Forests Rally, it’s pretty safe to say no one will be happier than Lauchlin O’Sullivan, driver of the Lucas Oil, Wolf LED-sponsored Super Production Subaru WRX STi, and his co-driver and team owner, Scott Putnam.

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

For Putnam, it’s a chance to compete on the national stage in his home state once again. And for both guys, it will be the culmination of a huge effort to rally back to the series with a rebuilt car after a rollover at the Oregon Trail Rally.

That story is an interesting one, and worth telling here.

We pick it up as the guys are hanging on to 6th overall and 2nd in class heading into Day 3.

Driver Lauchlin O’Sullivan: Our hopes and plans for a clean Day 3 didn’t start so good. In the first three stages that last day we had three flats, making four total for the event. But we were still battling for 2nd with two stages to go. The next stage was a 12-miler, a long stage, and a good place to pick up some time on the competition.  

Co-driver Scott Putnam: At this point I was just starting to think we might actually finish this one. Two more and a beer. Everything started out ok. Then 1.3 miles in we were

coming into a double caution Right 4 (medium/fast speed) off camber with a kicker and a cliff on the outside that I distinctly remembered from the first time through the stage. We deal with exposure all the time, but this had a little bit of a pucker factor built in as the car unweights over the kicker and floats toward the edge of the road exiting the corner. The first time through the tires finally bit about a foot from the edge and we merrily headed on down the stage. The second time through this section definitely had my attention. I pulled my head out of the notes and as soon as we start coming around the driver’s side rear kicks out severely, garnering an uncharacteristic “Oh Shit!” from Lauchlin.

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

LOS: We entered the corner perfectly set up, at about 50 mph. As I turn in, the rear of the car steps out into an aggressive oversteer attitude, and I counter steer to get car the car settled, while braking to scrub some speed off. This points us towards a cliff and into the "soft" dirt in the outside, or unused portion, of the corner. I really wasn’t worried at this point, as I am rarely driving at 10/10ths and specifically leave a certain percentage of room to absorb any “emergencies” that might arise. However, that gap would soon evaporate, compounded by an unfortunate series of events. We knew from the preceding stages our tires for this event did not turn well in the "loose" gravel/dirt, but liked the hard packed stuff much better. What we did not know though, was that the left rear tire was going flat. It’s hard to tell because these tires have a super hefty sidewall, but we know now the flat was what caused the initial surprise oversteer.

Putnam: If the flat tire is on the inside as the car is cornering, the effect is not that great. If the flat is on the outside of a car through the corner, this will radically impact the handling. As well, if the flat is on the front the car will understeer, or plow through the corner. If the flat is on the rear, the vehicle will oversteer substantially. So our reduced traction began to carry us off the road. My thoughts at this point? *@#*!!! I thought we were headed for the bottom of a ravine. I also flashed to an image of Finnish rally driver Jari-Matti Latvala’s off-road excursion in the 2009 WRC Portugal rally, where he went off on a left-hand corner and rolled 17 times down a steep hill, finally coming to rest 150 yards later against a tree. Not a positive thing to think about for sure!

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

LOS: I was still trying keep our front tires engaged with

the road. As the outer lip to the corner disappears, the rear of the car slides off the edge. At this point I'm full on the accelerator giving it all the torque I can to get us fully back on the road. I still don't think we are done, and feel I can win this battle with the cliff – and physics! The rear is

hanging off, and the fronts are hanging on, barely, but now the cliff starts to get a bit more of an angle to it. As the nose of the car starts looking skyward, I still think we will bounce back on the road, once the rear hits the ground. It hits, and then I feel a lightness, and assume we are powering back over the bank onto the road. I’m getting my mind – and my hands – ready to make any quick steering inputs. That’s not how this was going to go though. The rear hit, and with a hard rim digging into an ever more drastic cliff, we were soon actually barrel rolling sideways along the cliff. We did two barrel rolls sideways into a couple nose-to-tail rolls, finally coming to rest upside down. It took me a while to realize we were actually rolling, and I remember thinking, “This can't be happening!” It’s strange, but your mind slows everything down when you are in a situation such as this.  Somewhere between our first and second barrel roll I remember feeling sick to my stomach, as well as disgusted with myself. How would this impact our season? How would this impact our lives, both personally and professionally? And all that. Then you suddenly snap out of it and shift your thoughts instead to, “I hope this ends soon and that neither one of us is hurt.”

Putnam: As all hell was breaking loose, I went into a mode that was essentially, ‘I am going to focus my eyes forward on the dash and let the car do it’s thing. We’ll see where we are when it finishes and take it from there.’ Later on I kind of wished I had taken the time to look around as we were rolling, but it really didn’t seem like a good idea at the time! We rolled on a lateral axis once or twice and then end-over-end several times. Telemetry shows us at 70-80 mph prior to the turn and 53 mph as our wheels left the ground. This was a fairly violent scene inside the car and at some point the pace notes were ripped from my hands and I bloodied my knuckles on the roll cage. Thank heavens for that though! It’s what was keeping us alive. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! we went in rapid succession. Out the windshield through your peripheral vision you catch alternate glimpses of the sky and the ground, blue, brown, blue, brown, blue, brown as the car goes through its gyrations. As Lauchlin said, we ended up upside down. Everything is very still for a couple of seconds, while you are just hanging there trying to process what happened, and then Lauchlin asks if I am ok. I responded with a ‘yup,’ and then decided it was time to move.

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

LOS: We were upside down, and I was downhill, and my door would not open. I asked Scott if he could make his way out on his side, and as he did, I followed him out to assess the damage. We of course needed to get out the warning triangles alerting the other drivers to us, and we needed to get the OK sign out as well. Once the emergency stuff is taken care of, you look at what has happened to the car. Amazingly, the sides and the roof looked practically untouched. But the engine had been pushed back, and the hood was about halfway through our broken windshield. Also, the rear was crunched, making it look somewhat reminiscent of an Alfa GTV-6. ‘Stuff like this just does not happen to us,’ is all I could think to say to myself, wondering if I had just changed the course of our futures. The rest of the week that followed, and now whenever I think about it, I find myself still shaking my head in disbelief, and feeling truly disgusted. It turns out even the safest and most experienced drivers can leave room for safety, but when that cushion gets used up and the bad stuff starts compounding, you’re just a passenger along for the ride. It’s not a good feeling.

Putnam: Not that you will ever need to know this, but the trick to releasing seats belts when you are upside down is to stick your hand out, brace yourself, and try to soften the fall. Even with a helmet on, that hurts less than just dropping down on your head. After lowering myself down, and exiting the car in a less-than-graceful fashion, I staggered up the hill to survey the damage. I have to say you never get used to the violence of a crash, but I have been doing this long enough that I didn’t feel any great shock. Shit happens, and you have to deal with it. We grabbed the route book, the OK sign, the triangles and headed back up to the road. Looking back on it now, I would have to say disbelief is the word that comes to my mind most often as well. Lauchlin and I have been together for what, eight years, and contested how many hundreds, or even thousands, of stage miles, and nothing like this has ever happened. Nothing like this has really even ever come close to happening. All the luck and good fortune and talent and safety still aren’t enough to separate you sometimes from calamity though. I am thankful though, to Subaru and Streetwise Motorsports, for building us a good car that kept us safe while doing a series of stupid human tricks. As everyone who has ever looked at our car since we didn’t keep the shiny side up says, “It could have been worse.” Indeed.

Anyone who saw the Lucas Oil, Wolf LED-sponsored Super Production Subaru WRX STi in Oregon might have doubted it would ever rally again, let alone be seen again this season.

But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it has been revived and refreshed.

And after sitting out the last two events, so are its drivers. See you at Ojibwe.

Physics of a Rollover By David Gee

It’s all about the Gs baby. No, we’re not talking about the rap song by Big Bang. We’re talking about the measurement of gravitational forces acting on objects such as the human body.

At launch for example, the Space Shuttle astronauts experienced 1.7 Gs.

In a rally car rollover, such as the one Lauchlin O’Sullivan and Scott Putnam endured at the Oregon Trail Rally, they experienced 2 Gs, and for a brief time, exponentially more than that.

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

There is in fact a mathematical formula to measure this combo platter of G-forces, kinetic energy and violent speed changes the two Rally America competitors and their Subaru were subjected to.

For a scenario where a car stops abruptly from a speed of 30 miles per hour, a slower speed than what O’Sullivan and Putnam were traveling at, the sudden deceleration generates, for a brief moment anyway, as much as 30 Gs and 2.4 tons of force.

Deceleration = 967 ft/s2 = 294 m/s2 = 30 Gs

Force = 4813 lb = 21412 N = 2.4 tons.

And that begs the question; just how many Gs can the human body take, either for short – or extended – periods of time?

Obviously an athlete or astronaut will be able to withstand higher Gs because of their training than the average person.

During practice for the 1977 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, for instance, former British Formula One driver David Purley was briefly exposed to a force estimated at 179.8 Gs after his throttle stuck open in a corner.

In the subsequent impact, his car decelerated from 108 miles per hour to zero in a distance of two feet! He suffered serious leg, hip and pelvic injuries, but recovered to race again.

Even in ordinary grand-prix races, F1 drivers cope with 3 - 5 Gs throughout each race, with the driver's body experiencing forces 4 1/2 times their own body weight.

But for everyone, their ability to withstand G forces depends on three factors: the direction in which the G forces are felt, the amount of Gs involved, and how long those Gs last.

Though some people have pulled a muscle sneezing (see chart below for different degrees of G), typically we don’t suffer any negative effects from these everyday events because they're so brief. The trouble begins when G forces linger.

Though Putnam and O’Sullivan had some lingering issues from their incident, in the form of headaches and soreness, they were lucky to be uninjured for the most part. That is certainly a testament to the safety levels inherent in today’s rally cars. 

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

When Jari-Matti Latvala took his off-course, tumbling-down-the-mountainside excursion in a WRC event a couple of years ago, he and his co-driver Miikka Anttila were also not only uninjured, but many areas of the car's bodyshell were rebuilt and used in other rallies, just as Putnam’s Subaru is being repaired to rally again this summer.  

Some of the credit for that goes to the steel used for the roll-cage construction. It is high in ductility, which means it has the ability to deform under stress.

That allows the roll cage structure to not only absorb sufficient energy to protect the occupants, but also again, it leaves some parts of the car undamaged, despite the horrific forces on it.

(Photo Credit: Ben Rogge)

In Latvala’s car, basic measurements showed there was no deformation into the cockpit of the main roll cage hoop joint.  Also, the A-pillar and door bar roll cage structures remained virtually undamaged on both sides of the car.

Motorsport is all about pushing boundaries, and as a result, it becomes the ultimate proving ground for safety technology. That technology often makes its way into all of our cars, though hopefully we don’t have occasion to generate massive Gs by barrel rolling down the side of the road ala O’Sullivan and Putnam and Latvala and Anttila.

And by the way, next time you take that rolled up car magazine to swat at a fly, consider this. Insects don't have a circulatory system, so they are masters at enduring G forces because of the mechanical stresses their bodies can absorb. As a result, a fly can happily cope with 200 Gs. Who knew?

Check out the list below for some more of the Gs we humans experience.

DIFFERENT DEGREES OF G

Gravity at sea level: 1g

Ascending elevator: 1.14g

Braking in a sports car: 1.3g

Sneeze: 3g

Cough: 3.5g

Getting jostled in a crowd: 3.6g

Roller coaster: up to 4g

Slap on back: 4.1g

Formula One: 5g

Luge: 5.2g

Jump off a step and land stiff-legged: 8.1g

Aerobatic plane/fighter jet: 9-12g

Car collision with solid object, not wearing a seat belt: 70-100g

A Series of Fortunate Events Put O’Sullivan & Putnam On The Overall Podium at 100 Acre Wood Rally

Super Production drivers don’t often make it to the overall podium in the Rally America National Championship series. However, Lauchlin O’Sullivan and Scott Putnam did just that by grabbing a third overall, as well as a Super Production class win, at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood event in Missouri. And they not only needed the cooperation of their freshly-built Lucas Oil, Wolf LED-sponsored 2008 Subaru WRX STi, but they also needed a little help from their friends.

“So many good people had to come together to make this happen,” said O’Sullivan with appreciation. “We borrowed an Engine Control Unit from Vermont Sports Car, and Ramana Lagemann loaned us the differential controller out of his car.  Doug Nagy of Streetwise Motorsports built us a great car though and we didn’t skip a beat. The car came to Missouri with 0 race/rally miles on it, and the first time I got to drive it was the day of the rally. All things considered, it was an incredible result!”

“Scheduling prevented us from being able to test the vehicle,” added Putnam. “There was more than a little concern about this prior to the race let me tell you. Normally a new vehicle running in it’s first event will have a number of little gremlins that have to be dealt with, but with this car it was mainly piddly stuff. A radiator hose clamp failed the night before the race and that was about it. A testament to a good car build on Doug Nagy’s part.”

Amidst all these other variables, it also began to snow about mid-way through their recce. So half of the team’s notes were immediately rendered worthless for the event.

“The conditions were really odd,“ co-driver Putnam explains. “The three inches of ‘snow,’ if you want to use that term loosely, really consisted of small ice pellets that were quite dense. Watching cars drive through it on the recce was like they were going through standing water - it formed a wave rather than billowing like normal snow would. If you got out of the line the snow was quite dense and the grip inconsistent and the car could get tossed around by the snow.”

As night fell on Day One, another variable was about to come into play. O’Sullivan and Putnam hadn’t yet tested their new Wolf LED light rack on their fresh Subaru, and had no idea how the lights were aimed.

“I have to say, the fact that we made up so much time in the night stages on both days really says a lot about our new lighting system from Wolf LED,” O’Sullivan said. “Though we were a bit worried before heading out, it didn’t matter that our lights weren’t aimed. They lit up the forest, and we were able to knock down some quick times.”

On Saturday, Day 2 of the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood, it warmed up and got quite slushy and the gravel started poking through.

“Yeah, later in the day it was gravelly, but then you had snow and ice where it was shaded,” Putnam recalls. “The thing is, you never really knew from one corner to the next just how it was going to be. I’m glad Lauchlin was driving!”

Lauchlin’s job wasn’t made any easier where the rubber meets the road.

“Snow really wasn’t in the forecast and we had brought along a set of three used snow tires, and one new one, ‘just in case,’” O’Sullivan said. “Knowing we have no spare, we had to keep it in the middle of the road, due to the fact there were simply jagged rocks on the sides, and no snow banks. We survived Day One in the lead, but began Day Two with our beat-up tires. Finally, we came into service and got two worn tires from another team to put on the fronts. Running super ragged tires, you just can't attack or push like usual, particularly with pressure coming from Evan Cline and David Sterckx, who finished behind us in fourth and fifth place overall respectively.”

On the last stage O’Sullivan and Putnam had a lead built up over those guys, so they turned up the wick, deciding to have “a bit of fun” and attack more aggressively.

Then came a small combo platter of both good – and bad – luck.

The more aggressive driving resulted in a flat tire. But it happened close enough to the end of the stage that they were able to drive it out of the stage without losing too much time.

However, after exiting the finish control, they used their pristine new safari jack to lift the car up to change the tire, and the jack promptly broke.

“Imagine if we had a flat out on the stage?” asks O’Sullivan. “We would be done. So, some luck came into play, on top of having a great car build, and some help from our fellow competitors.”

Some of that help came, rather unwittingly, from six-time Rally in the 100 Acre Wood winner Ken Block. He damaged his car on Day One, but was able to come back the second day using SuperRally rules, which allows a team to re-enter with time penalties.

Anyway, his car eventually had electrical problems, forcing them out for good. Co-driver Alex Gelsomino was standing before the corner where they retired, with the OK sign out, and cautioning other competitors to slow down as they came through the fast right hander.

“If we had been going our regular speed there, with the black ice, we might have gone off,” stated O’Sullivan. “I'm sure they saved us, and many others, by being there.”

“Anytime traction went away due to ice in a corner it would definitely get your attention,“ added Putnam. “If I was looking up at the time I would involuntarily want to check our distance to the trees. Eventually I just got to the point of looking up during the straightaways and looking down at the notes during the corners. The sensation of sliding doesn’t typically bother me per se, but for some reason, if I happened to be looking up, this time it did.”

After not being able to run Sno*Drift, the first event of the season, things are definitely looking up for the team’s chances of defending the Rally America Super Production National Championship title they earned in 2012.

“This is a great result, but it’s a long season,” cautions Putnam. “We already have used up our throw-away event, so from here on out, reliability and finishing every event will be really important.”

And earning a few more podiums along the way would be welcome as well.
Lucas Oil Products is a Corona, California-based manufacturer and distributor of automotive oil, petroleum additives, and lubricants for high performance engines.
Wolf LED Systems, located in Chino Hills, California, offers affordable LED products for race teams, rock crawlers, rally racers, sand cars, dirt bikes, ATV’s, heavy equipment and RVs.