By Colin Wood
Feb 16, 2026
|
rally,
WRC,
Hyundai Motorsport
Driving into the snowbank makes you go faster?
As Hyundai Motorsport driver Adrien Fourmaux explains, many drivers will “lean” on the snowbanks to maximize their performance in a snowy rally stage.
2/16/26 12:28 p.m.
Do you think this could work in Florida? Asking for a friend...
2/16/26 12:55 p.m.
In reply to Colin Wood :
2/16/26 12:59 p.m.
Ice racing a Saab 96; 5 laps to get up front, just reeling in the leader and I get passed ON the snowbank. Bruce had used the bank like a high banked track and was gone.
He had a Chevy Citation FWD, no body but a cage. Big studded snows up front, bolognas out back. Got back in the pits and told my brother I learned something. But Bruce is half the weight, twice the power in Open Class. Mark says: "Yeah, if that helps you sleep at night. That was his wife in Powder Puff Class."
Point is, test the solidity of banks and use them.
2/16/26 1:12 p.m.
When I was younger I used to hurl my mother's Pinto down gravel roads at the swamps. The area is now the Las Vegas Wetlands Park.
There was a set of set of S curves that could be taken flat using the snowbank technique described in the video. The road blade meant there was always a 3' high sand bank on the side of the road.
You'd be traveling about 85-90mph. The car would take right hander flat no problem but that would have you on a less than optimal line for the left hander. Being young and dumb I never lifted. The big chrome rear bumper of the Pinto hooked the sand bank and pointed the car straight.
I once tried this set of corners without the berm shot and it was solidly 5mph slower.
2/16/26 2:13 p.m.
This was the way we all learned to drive up in snow country....
2/16/26 4:08 p.m.
It's probably similar to driving off the cushion on a dirt oval.
2/16/26 4:11 p.m.
Hey, just like in RalliSport Challenge 2 for the original XBox!
2/16/26 4:49 p.m.
Well, there's this other thing we do.
When you're doing everything you can to get by a guy, you draw him up high in the turns, then go into the next one low and way harder than you normally would, leaning all over him through the turn so you can get on the gas sooner. Works every time
2/17/26 11:16 a.m.
They learned to do the Martinsville wall ride before we did.
2/17/26 1:23 p.m.
I vividly remember one winter cresting a hill to find the packed snow had frozen hard -- no grip at all! -- and at the bottom of the hill was a guy spinning his wheels on the ice. I crabbed the back of my car into the snowbank, and by the time I got to the bottom was going just fast enough to tap the guy off the ice...he waved, I waved, and we motored on our separate ways.
Snowbanks are your friends. :)
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