by "WRXforScience" (WRXforScience)
Published 12/19/2017 at 11:17
by "WRXforScience" (WRXforScience)
Published 12/19/2017 at 11:17
Tags: Road Rally
; SCCA
STARS: 2
After moving to Texas a few years after getting hooked on
autocross (read about it in
part I here
), one of the Subaru forum guys had his
regular rally co-driver drop out of an upcoming event. He was already
registered for the event and it was already paid for, so any SCCA member could
fill-in for free. There weren’t any autocrosses that day, so I decided to give
it a try. Rally was completely different from autocross.
The rally events take place on public roads and most of the
rallies involve finding a predetermined route or specific signs from purposefully
obtuse directions. The Texas Region SCCA primarily run what are called puzzles
and games rallies, some other regions prefer the time-speed-distance type where
you are prescribed a course and you have to complete it in an exact time with a
specified average speed. I ended up doing one of each type, my first rally was
a hybrid of the two systems where you had to figure out directions based on
clues and signs or landmarks on the course but the end goal was to do the route
twice in the exact same amount of time. The trick to the rally was that the
timer was hidden and you didn’t know where the stop and start points were for
timing, so if you had to try not to be ahead or behind pace at any point.
After driving around for a couple of hours solving riddles,
we made it to the final checkpoint and waited for our results. Amazingly, we
ended up winning the novice class and finished fourth overall. One of the most
enjoyable parts of the whole experience was talking with our fellow competitors
and comparing notes while we waited on the scores, no one really knows how they
did and everyone still has unanswered questions until the results and tricks
are revealed. I ended up coming back for another rally as a driver,
unfortunately those two rallies are all I’ve done. There just aren’t enough
weekends to do all the SCCA events, if only there were events during the week…