Service crew - How !?

[Pugdriver205]

Brain pick please - and excuse me if answer maybe obvious ? - It is my intention to start local single stage rallying next year & I wondered how you went about finding a service crew - (Singular mechanic or plural - whats the norm ?) Have a fair bit of sprint hillclimb experience but no rally experience other than as a spectator...... Idea's ??

[flagwaver]

Join your local Motor Club and offer to do some servicing for some of the members.

Go to your local collage and see if any of them are interested.

Go to your local car sales / repair shop etc

sweet talk friends & family.

Just turn up at an event, a lot of rally crews will just muck in when there is a problem.

But before any of that I suggest you attend a couple of MUSV (Multi Use Single Venue) events and just see what is actually involved.

Good Luck

PS no I am not available to service.

[StockHatch782]

Stick an advert on the internet, there'll likely be someone who wants to do it either for the experience or just for fun. Might be a good idea to offer to chip in towards their travel if they're coming a long way, and I would certainly never expect to pay for my accommodation as service crew.

Definitely go and watch a few rallies and walk around the service areas, documentation etc. to get a feel for how it all works; there's a bit more paperwork and timing in rallying than most motorsport.

[BertMk2]

Most peoples service crews tend to be friends and family, we usually take along 2 or 3 people to help out but as others have mentioned you can usually grab extra help from nearby crews if you need it (and borrow all sorts of tools ). It helps if you've got a couple of people to service - on a lot of events they won't see a lot of the action as the stages aren't close to service so they can keep each other company while you're gone (although if you're doing single venue events that's less of a problem).

If there are other crews going from your area it may be possible to share service crew with them. We quite often do the same events as other crews that we know and always try and park up next to each other in service - that way the service crew can be shared and there are plenty of people to jump onto a particular car if there is a problem. It also helps keep them occupied as there will be cars coming and going at different times depending on start times.

Will you be using the same co-driver on each event and have they competed before? If not it's definitely worth going along to an event with another crew and getting your co-driver to shadow them - it'll help no end.