why in rally races there is a guy on a passenger seat explaining where to drive?
In: 743
Because this will be (usually) 2nd time the route has been driven by the driver after a single recon and the stage will consist of *many* unique corners.
It would be impossible to memorise like you do a circuit so the navigator is doing just that: Telling the driver what is coming up and (based on their own notes from recon), how to to drive each part of the course.
Rally racing is very different from circuit racing. Instead of short laps around a fixed track, they are longer point-to-point stages, with routes that can vary season to season.
Track racers can get several hours in which to make practice laps, not to mention time on a simulator with an accurate track model, and they may even have raced the same track with minimal or no changes many times before. They can therefore become very familiar with the layout.
In rally, on the other hand, the driver gets maybe one or two reconnaissance runs where they can drive the course at road legal speeds – this is the time during which the co-driver makes the notes they’ll then read from during the flying run.
Codriver does more than just read the pacenotes during the “special stages” – it’s their job to navigate throughout the rally on normal roads to the start point of each special stage where there are checkpoints that the car must arrive at within a certain time window, if the car is late or early then time penalties are added. He is also reaponsible for managing the time-card which keeps track of the car’s time throughout the rally.
Good summary of the co-driver’s responsibilities [here](https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-role-of-a-co-driver-in-a-rally-car-explained-183242.html)
Have you ever driven through mountainous roads?
When there’s a turn ahead, and thepuntain blocks your view, you’re not sure if a turn is going to be a slight turn or a hard turn. So to drive safely, you slow down.
The passenger is just a navigator so the driver can focus on driving fast instead of driving and paying attention to the next curvatures. The passenger will tell them “slight right” so the driver can maintain their high speed, or “hard right” at which the driver will slow down so their car doesn’t spin out when making the sharp turn. (Pretty sure the passenger uses more words, but that’s the simple explanation).
The driver can drive without the passenger, but going at high speed requires a huge amount of focus. The additional weight of a passenger is more valuable as a navigator, than driving solo with less weight.
Driving those courses is seriously intense; having a second person warn you what’s coming up is extremely helpful and allows the driver to focus on white-knuckle driving. They don’t memorize every detail of every track either which is why the passenger has a map