I like All Stars drives, MP always feels like a bit of a party and a great time to greet friends you might have not seen in a long time.
Al Faqa to Al Qudra was the route, I was allocated to the -5 convoy lead by Barish, the organizing Marshall. Plenty of support, Tom, Sorin and myself in the convoy itself with Mahmood Yasin and Nabil floating around. Additional support provided by Abu Baker and "The Queen of Al Faqa" herself.
Barish selected a very nice and enjoyable route, he did say he would like to increase pace as and when the convoy felt comfortable, he did a great job finding that balance of pushing the convoy a little bit more but always keeping it safe.
The first drives with Almost are used to give confidence to the less experienced drivers and get everyone used to the way Almost convoys move, this is critical to make sure that when the level and pace increase everyone is in tune allowing us all to have fun in a safely environment.
From a position of 2nd lead difficult to comment on how the convoy was doing but my main comments would be:
Radio communication. It felt good, "clear" was being given after straight crest and issues reported promptly. Well done.
Distance. Work to be done on this one, this is a critical factor, other than the obvious of being with friends and having support for recoveries the main advantage of a convoy is that you can use the car in front of you to show what is coming, you need to be not too close and not too far, enough to see the lines, speed, ... that he/she is using and with enough space to react if you need to.
Pace. Needs to be increased, of course the priority is always to be safe and that´s the way crests and other difficult elements should be approached but after them, in the flat and easier areas you need to catch up with the car in front of you.
Gravity, your "best friend or worst enemy". The 2 main situations that we had in the drive were related to fighting gravity, car asking for the steering to be moved right and drivers deciding it was better to go left, do NEVER fight gravity, even very confident drivers don´t fight it, yes, they move closer to the line between right and wrong but they know the price for crossing that line.
2nd tries. I will always remember what Shamsi said to a Newbie in a drive I was attending as support. "It is your right as Newbie to have as many 2nd tries as you need", use it, it goes in line with the "gravity" point, you need to do 10 2nd tries in the same place, not a problem, you are learning, it is the way it is meant to be. He also said "too many 2nd tries as Interm and we burn your car" ... just warning you.
Climbs after a straight crest. A few 2nd tries were related to not accelerating hard enough after clearing a crest, if you see that you are going to have to climb high from a low position, better you floor it from the start, if after too much power you can always release but the opposite, starting slow and trying to make up for it half way does not normally work.
See you on the sand (unfortunately not too soon
) - enjoy the summer!!!