KrawlTex

Austin is such a small community that everybody runs in to each other eventually. I met Dave Carpetyon some time about a year ago. He is probably the youngest premier driver in American rally racing and is a local 21 year old driver; a very laid back guy.

There was a rally in Paris, Texas and his usual co-driver couldn't make it. I sat in for Rob and after a crash course and no sort of in car practice, we ended up winning both races in the open (highest) class in a Japnese only, imported Lancer Evo.

While he is young, Dave is no novice to rally racing. Last year he won Pike's Peak and the Snow Drift challenge in his tired Evo. This year he got a new car... and won Pike's Peak Rally for a consecutive year in the open class. The man has serious talent!

Which brings me to his next milestone. His company, Rally Ready Motorsports is moving to a larger shop off of Ben White. He will be sharing a portion of a 15000 square foot warehouse with another company. This gives Dave the space he needs to build and maintain more rally cars.

The new shop will also be the head quarters of Rally Ready Driving School. Their team is building a full rally training course with a skid pad and several miles of track in San Marcos. Details are still in the works, but it looks like classes will start as early as October. In the beginning, it will be a two day weekend class... run what you brung. There will be classroom and field instruction, driving and braking techniques, and an intro to stage notes.

Hopefully, I will be in one of his preliminary test classes. Eventually, Rally Ready will offer race prepped vehicles to rent for the class. After talking with Dave a bit about it last night, his preference is a stock front wheel drive beater to teach people the basic skills of this kind of driving... acuras, hondas, vw jettas and gti's. This can be a very fun low budget "beater" kind of racing if you don't go high tech on an all wheel drive turbo car. Honestly, any car can be rallied. A lot of people race escorts, festivas, old bmw's and other $1000 vehicles. I'm looking at it as training for desert racing. With the Texas desert racing scene starting to take shape, there may be the same opportunities for hosting rallys on these properties and start a Texas rally circuit...