BTW, i've been my share on gravel roads on completely stock suspension. It's lot of fun, as much as ice/snow roads driving. Few hints with using stock heigh/stock suspension:
- road pavement doesn't mean how good road can be. You can go fast on good gravel road, if it's not full of big stones/potholes and such.
- for worse roads limit never go too fast driving them first time. When you've been driven there few times, you should learn, where the biggest roadholes and such are, drop speed as needed. Normally driving at normal speeds it should not be of impossible challenge, heck, at least front of wrx of my colleague is even lower then my gt86, and he does lot of rallying (has proper CF engine/bumper protection pan though, so bit less scare of hard landings)
- visibility. 3 times highlighted. Gravel roads are often in country, with trees/houses/whatever blocking view behind low radius turns. Always leave big enough safety margin when you don't know what's ahead. There always can be some local driving in opposite direction, or some pedestrian in middle of road or some wildlife animal and so on. Never go too fast to not be able to stop or maneuver around unexpected. Leave excessive speed for visible far ahead stages or for specialised rally roads/stages with blocked off traffic by race officials and so on to lessen chance of unexpected problems / push only in controlled situation. With seeing far ahead you'll also be able to use whole road width.
- be careful with overestimating own skills. Imho even better is to drive fast where environment is controllable and mistakes are less costly - i.e. on track. There, if you loose control, in many cases you just slide outside track on grass till stop, or other track day enthusiasts will see you far ahead to be able to stop in time, one direction traffic. Less hitting kerb and damaging suspension, less damaging body/bumpers (which might get rather costly even for minor crashes. For example - in pre late-2014 even refills after leak from damaged AC heat exchanger may get very costly (guess, how i found out
). It's not always just changing bumper and paying for it's repainting. And yes, big flashy rally jumps or going straight over ditch/cutting corners are not for our stock suspension. I'd even wouldn't turn off VSC off when not on track, somewhere where mistakes are less costly. Not 'because racecar', but 'because paid for repairs', when overestimated my still lacking skills too much/too soon.