Rise up

Did you know that in 2005 the team actually did a little development, intended for official cars only.  Apart from the new bumpers that I already mentionned there was also a suspension ride height control system.  By pushing a button, on his steering wheel, the driver could lift or lower the car instantly thanks to a hydraulic system installed on the shocks.  In our 2005 deal it was mentionned that we would "possibly" have it on our car but unfortunately it turned out we did not. 

The system was quite useful.  Example:

Everybody knows that Neste Rally Finland is like "racing on gravel", right?  But many can't believe that parts of the Finnish stages can get very, very rough. 

Which parts?

Simple, the Finnish stages have two types of roads: fast gravel main roads, rather wide and with very hard surface because there is traffic on them all year round.  Then, there are narrower, more sandy surfaced roads, which don't have much traffic on them at all.  On the second pass through the stages, these sections can get deeply rutted, all the way to the bedrock that was used to lay the road during construction...  So, since rally cars are set up with very low ride heights for precision driving at high speeds, once you turn off the nice road onto that rough one, you will be hitting the sump guard, bumping through the shocks...all that, at very high speeds.  This makes it sometimes very difficult to handle the car.  In these situations, being able to instantly lift your car 2 or 3 cm can help. 

For us, the idea was to run low on the first pass, 160mm on front, then raise the car a couple cm's for the second pass...