Co-driver's equipment

Someone asked once that why my equipment bag is so big? Simply because as a co-driver you have to carry a lot of stuff with you to the rallies.

First of all you have the normal stuff that the driver's also have: suit, underwear, socks, shoes, balaclava, HANS device, helmet, camel bag. The HANS device and helmet aren't something you easily carry in a bag since they require a lot of space. Especially the helmet. These take a lot of space in the bag since the rest of co-driver's equipment fit into a compact space. Driver's also have gloves, but obviously those don't mean much space wise. Instead of gloves I have two watches. One as a primary watch and the other as a back up.

Then the stuff in the co-driver's bag: Pace note book or two depending on a rally, different kinds of pencils/pens, extra led for pencils, eraser, a notepad for keeping team plans and other papers, organizer's road book, a small flashlight, electrical tape(always handy to have around), spare battery for watches, spare battery for intercom, couple of spare fuses, couple of protein bars, couple of recovery drinks, mobile phone, small piece of cloth for wheel nuts so that they don't melt inside the snow when changing tires from front to back, small screwdriver, small pliers.

In winter rallies I also have a couple of chemical "glove warmers" which warm up when you open the package. Nice to have if you retire and have to wait a couple of hours standing on a snow bank. Of course you have your normal winter clothing in the car with you, but since the warmers only weight some tens of grams they are nice to have around.  For testing I have a map book with all the roads in Finland. That isn't with me inside the rally car simply because it takes a lot of space and weighs maybe half a kilo.

So that's pretty much it. A lot more than just a pace note book and a road book that many picture the co-driver to have in a rally car. Of course it would be lighter to drive around without many of the items, but if they weight roughly a kilo then it doesn't make that much of a difference in my eyes. The annoyance of not having them around when you need them is bigger than the extra weight carried inside the car.