Mein erster JUMP im Rallyeauto?! Volker Strycek & MoWo

Then we have to turn the side mirror straight again. Welcome to a new video, guys. Today we are at a home game, you could say. At the Saalfalz rally in St. Wendel. I'm here for the first time. Opel invited me. We already know what this car is about. Because I drove it in Pferdesfeld two years ago. And I drive the car. We use the fly-off wheels. And let it accelerate to the outside. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to drive today. Although it was originally planned. But unfortunately it didn't work out in the short term. But I'm a passenger at the Volker Stritzek. In one of these beautiful cars. I think our car is right back there. We'll take a look at it in a moment. And it's a super exciting topic. Because this is the first and only electric rally in the world. Accordingly, an extreme charging infrastructure is being set up for this event. To be able to charge the cars between the evaluation tests. We'll take a look at that in a moment. With the colleague who is responsible for it. He explains it to us a bit. But in general, I have to say that I am very happy. Because I have a lot of respect for rally sports. I think the best racers there are. See Walter Röhr. They come from rally sports. And if you are good at rally sports. And you master it on loose ground. You are usually very good on solid ground. Most rally drivers who switch to touring sports. Drive relatively fast. Very far in front. That's why I'm a little hot for it. To drive a rally yourself. To make this experience. And of course to get better in the touring car. Because I think if you are good at rally sports. Then it is much easier for you on asphalt in touring sports. And that's why I really want to take that with me. And of course we're working on that a bit. So that we can take a seat on the driver's seat next time. But I would say we'll take a look at what's going on here. Let's go. Normally there are 18 cars in the series. But at the moment it is significantly shortened. Because a few of them are also raising the budget for the WM races at the end of the season. And I think two cars have already had an accident. And therefore no longer in the race. And this here. Here it says e-VIP. This is our car for today. And the cool thing is. Here is of course Volker Stritzek on the window. And VIP. And the funny thing is really. I drive in the RCN. In the car in which Volker Stritzek used to drive. In the blue Astra H. And there is also Volker Stritzek on the side. And my name just below. In that case, it just says VIP here. This is a Corsa e-Rally. Yes, we have already shown the car. Pretty exciting. Because it is based on the stock car. This is a brand trophy. Accordingly, the cars are converted as a stock car. And everyone can buy the car. So you out there. If you feel like rallying. You can just buy the car. And then participate here with the necessary license that you need. That means in the car we have the normal 50 kWh battery. We have 136 hp. But in the interior. Come on, let's take a look inside. In the interior, of course, everything is converted to motorsport. We have safety-relevant features. Like the six-point belt. The seats. The roll-over cage. And so on and so forth. But also games like a fly-on handbrake. For which, of course, things have to be changed to the software of the car. So that the fly-on handbrake works. So that's a lot of fun. And what's also cool. We heard that in the video back then. The car has a sound switch. With which you can turn on the sound of the car again. That's just important. That when you are at a rally stage. And the spectators are on the side of the road. That they hear the car. When it suddenly drives. Because when an electric car comes. That doesn't make any noise. Then the spectators don't know. Okay, attention, there's a car coming. But you just don't hear anything. That's why he needs that. But I would say. Let's take a look at the charging infrastructure. Because as you can see here. There's a huge box behind me. This is how the Opel Corsa eRally is charged. How it all works. Let's let Charlie explain that to us now. This is Charlie. I pronounced it wrong earlier. Not Charlie, but Charlie. You are the man. You can already see it on your T-shirt. That's why. That makes sure that anything works at all. As I have seen. Every car has a single charging cable. How many cars can you charge at the same time? We can charge up to 20 cars at the same time. 20 cars? Yes, exactly. With the power of 100 to 140 kW. Up to 140 kW? Exactly. So now here is normally. Here on the place where we are. No charging station. How does that work? How can I imagine that? Very simple. I would say. Come on in the back. Yes, yes, come on. Here I already see thick cables. Very thick. What you like about this whole story is that we are here from the local power grid. Trafostation. Use medium voltage connections. Yes. In order not to have to use generators or other fossil fuels on site. Okay, that means you also use eco-electricity, right? Exactly. What works. What the supplier or the electricity supplier offers us. What works. And you can really pull out so much electricity that you can charge 20 cars at the same time with 140 kW? Exactly. That means we are here at the maximum with this trafostation. 2 megawatts. Yes. And you probably see it in my face. I sweat like hell. How do you do that with the temperatures? Is that a big problem or? No. The trafostation is cooled by oil. Yes. Oh. The power converters are cooled by air here. Yes. And all the cubes outside at the charging station are cooled by water here. That means we have set up a complete water infrastructure with four coolers and pump clear water through here, which we then drain again. That means you can charge full power all day? Full power. Very, very exciting topic. Here, too, look, everything is full of thick cables. Here we have the entrance of the medium voltage field. Here I have two reserve fields where I could supply something again or expand it. And here is my small trafo switch. Then it goes on here to the measuring unit. Yes. There are current and voltage converters in there. Over here to the trafo, which you can now hear a little. If the power goes up to 1,500, 2,000 amperes later. Ah, you can see how much power is currently flowing. Ampere, exactly. Yes. Here comes the low voltage side. And up here, over the copper rail, you can maybe show it. That is voltage with 1,500 amperes back again. I have already prepared it. These are the small output fuses. That's a little bigger than what you have at home in the power box, right? 500 amperes. And here is the small low voltage grid. You can actually also supply a small, small city with it. That means every charge outside with these black boxes corresponds to about seven single-family houses. Let's go one step further. Yes. It's also exciting to take a look inside. There, yes. Exactly. On the other side, too. I just wanted to see if it was warm, but it's all relatively cool, isn't it? For the temperature we have now. Exactly. Here you can see the lines coming over from the other side. And here the power modules, which convert the whole thing into power and then send it to the plug. But that also means that you could charge even more with this setup. Like 140 kW. You only limit it to the charging speed of the car. Exactly. There are several functions. Yes. Okay. Yes, of course. Thank you very, very much. Very, very cool. Very exciting. A very important man here. Without him, all of this wouldn't work. So, let's swing into the car. This one here, I still have it from my first drive with the Opel Corsa. Look, this is Volker. Thank you very much. Hi. We already had you in front of the camera. And I also told you that it's nice for me to drive a car with your name on it. That's nice. Because I'm driving with your old Astra H in the RCN. With Yannick. I'm happy today that I can sit with you on the passenger seat. That's new. Yes, I'm happy that you're doing it. And we see that rally and circuit racing are both motorsport, but completely different disciplines. I already said earlier that I'm very, very respectful of all rally drivers. Walter Röhrl was a very good example. When you come from rallying, you control the car on a loose surface. Then you actually control it everywhere, right? I don't want to say that, but of course the terrain is completely different. And as I said, you know the circuit. We always drive 100 percent and can drive to the point. That doesn't work with rallying. Doesn't work with rallying. Exactly. And of course it's always a symbiotic relationship between the driver and the passenger. The passenger of course reads the driver. Do I read something today? We don't have a schedule together. Exactly. And if we don't have a schedule, it doesn't work. We have to write down exactly beforehand which corner comes and what speed we want to drive there. You have to drive in sight. That means we sometimes drive to passages where you don't know how to go on. And if you have the announcement, for example, full top, 300 meters, right 2, then you know. Then you can rely on it. Exactly. But we have to see what comes after the top. Does that mean you've never driven here on the track? No, no, no. Let's go in sight and hope that we can do everything. Yes, we can do it. Okay, let's get ready. Let's go. Cool. Feels a bit homey. Let's go. Let the tires warm up a bit. That's the only thing we have to warm up in the electric car. And the handbrake is also used directly. That's awesome. I've already seen a few animals within a few meters. Of course, you always have to watch out for wild animals on the rally. They can go everywhere. The problem here is that Volker has to drive in sight. He doesn't have an experienced passenger with him who can read him the roadbook and tell him what happens behind the next curve. Accordingly, he has to rely on his instincts and on what he sees. The flair of such a rally is of course awesome. The people are just standing in the wilderness and watching. It's really, really cool. It's getting warmer and warmer. And Volker can now take the car in the curve much harder. But in the weather it doesn't take long until the tires are warm. Now it's going into the open area. Straight out. Of course, this is the difficulty in rallying. This change of the surroundings. You have to know how the curves stand still. Because he has no information and drives in sight, he has to drive very carefully here. 10.5 kilometers. Awesome. Even for such an experienced racer like Volker, it's always cool to do something like this. We'll have to ask him right away. Then we have to turn the side mirror straight again. Awesome, guys. So, let's go to the second stage. It feels really crazy to drive so fast through the fields here. Awesome, so many people here at the start. It's still protected here. So that nothing is damaged by the electronics, especially with such offsets. Very tight curve. But of course the fly-off is perfect for that. Awesome. Part of the track again. What was already here. And also a few curves that I noticed. Mega. Now you really noticed at the point where we drove on the same track again. When you have driven once, it is much more familiar. Yes, absolutely. Very cool. Even you do that, even though you have been doing motorsport for so long and drive so much. Still so much fun, right? Yes, absolutely. I mean, you can see the effort. You can see how we look. We are soaking wet. Yes, it is of course incredibly difficult to drive in sight. But in the end you saw how selective the whole thing is and how you really have to be highly concentrated. Also about the jumps. Yes, that you jump straight so that the car does not shift. Yes, just awesome, right? Mega. It was so much fun. It was really, really cool. Guys, that was awesome. It was so much fun. I really found it a bit annoying. It got me. I hope that it really works, that I can get into the car here in the future. What is really remarkable is that battery or temperature management of the battery is of course a huge topic in the car. Especially with the heat. You saw it in the whole video. The sweat ran down my face. And not only the face, but also everywhere else in the body. Accordingly, you can imagine how such a battery goes when it has to pull out full power all the time. So that really has to be handled extremely well by the car, by the battery, by the temperature management. And that makes the car really, really good. In addition, we have arrived here with a remaining range of 40%. So Volker is someone who always sets himself the challenge in private to consume as little electricity as possible or to recuperate as much as possible between the stages. So mega cool. The other guys, I looked at the monitor earlier. The other guys all came in with 25 to 30 percent. And we with 40. But we also drove without air conditioning. Because tough guys. We don't need air conditioning. Although it would not have cost us any performance. So we could have turned it on. What is also very special, I don't even know if we can film on it. Look, our tires that we have here. They don't have a Michelin logo on them. The sponsor or the tire manufacturer for this rally is Michelin. And there is only one tire. So there are not a thousand different tires that are then changed, but there is one tire for the series. And we drove a test tire on our car, which will only be used in the next few years or in the next season. So Volker doesn't just do whip shuttles here and drives me around, but he also does a lot of other tasks. Among other things, testing the tire. So he tests different tires and then says at the end, yes, that was cool, we'll take it for next season. So that's also his job. Accordingly, I also talked to him about the tires. He says, yes, there is a tire, everyone drives it, but we drive special tires. So, as I said, it was a lot of fun. I really hope that we can do this again. And that I can take a seat on the driver's seat, because I'm really up for it. It's very different from driving on the asphalt in a circle. I think you can learn a lot and take a lot with you in the all-terrain touring car motorsport. Because you just have to react very quickly and individually to different situations. You can't remember, hey, the curve was like this, the curve was like that. Because in between a car drives along, that pushes all the gravel on the road and already your braking point is at a completely different point. So accordingly, you can't really look for braking points and stuff like that. Sure, it has an advantage if you know the track. But it's just not like with us on the circuit, that every lap is the same. It's always different and you never know what to expect in the next curve. Accordingly, many, many thanks to Opel for inviting me. It was a great experience. I hope we'll see each other again in this driver's camp with the rally cars. And I thank you for watching. Feel free to leave a thumbs up and a like. And get in! Ciao!