I was watching WRC races on SPEED last night and after several in-car sequences I realized that I didn't have a clue what the co-driver was telling the driver as he read from the route book. It was things like " cut, third, open, 15, minus." and this was for one curve. Anybody familiar with this jargon? It's cool to hear, but would mean so much more if I knew what the hell it meant. Funny though, when the driver screws up the co-driver seems to always call him STUPID, no matter what language they would normally speak in.

 

Those are pace notes he is reading. Basically it is a type of verbal shorthand to let the driver know what the course is going to do in front of him. Drivers are not allowed to drive or practice the course before hand.

 

This much was obvious.

The question stands: what does the shorthand mean--specifically?

 

Exactly! I think I did hear that "cut" meant that the driver could cut the corner. If the team is not allowed to drive the days circuit where does the route book come from, and is it the same for each team?

 

If you watched the Catalunya WRC, the narrator explained some of the shorthand. Stuff I remembered:

Opens - exit opens, the driver can accelerate out of the corner
Tightens - exit tightens, the driver cannot accelerate out of the corner
1-5 - relative measure of the tightness of the turn (?)
Other numbers - "opens 60" for example, the turn opens to a straight which is 60 meters long (I think)

I'm not sure what the plus and minus mean, but I think it might have to do with the camber of the road.

The teams (driver/co-pilot) take pace notes on the practice days. One of the comments that Colin McRae mentioned was that his pace notes were not accurate because the rally course is a normal street that is not closed so they couldn't go at speed.

 

if you watch carefully (or play any video game) the absolute speed is not so important - it is the gear which you need for the corner to get the best power for the car and the braking point. The co-driver is trying to give the information ahead primarily on these things.

So I think the co-driver will call out the gear for the corner - however this is not normally accurate enough so they add the plus and minus to give more specific detail for the gear - e.g. 4 plus is a faster fourth gear corner - 4 minus will be a bit slower.

Opens - this means that the driver does not have to take too much care on the exit - he can run wide - whereas tightens means there is probably an obstacle on the corner exit or it leads into another corner.

the other numbers are the distance to the next braking points I think

they will add other stuff like jump or water or also the surface changes - or if there is a rock on the inside of a corner.

If the co-driver gets lost with his notes the driver has to slow down a lot and call out how the road appears so that the co-driver can find his place again.