(A true learning experience) By Peter Schneider
Over the February 9th weekend, I attended my first Canadian Winter Rally, a two-day event, that included both day and night Sections. The event was Round 1 of the 2018 British Columbia Rally Championship, and it was hosted by the West Coast Rally Association. It started in Merritt, BC Canada, a five-hour drive northwest of Seattle. The organizer for the last 30 years is Paul Westwick. Paul won the 2016 Winter Alcan (www.alcan5000) driving with Yulia Smolyansky who was cranking a Curta for nine days and a little over 4,500 miles.
I navigated for John Alkema from southern California, who recently purchased a 2008 Subaru Forester which was equipped to run in the Unlimited Class. It was our second event together. I flew in from New Jersey to Seattle early Friday morning and met up with him in Bellingham, Washington before driving to British Columbia (BC). John is an avid motorcyclist and off-roader and has competed and staffed several Alcan5000s. And with Paul Dubinsky (http://rallyroadie.org/wordpress/) drove around the world, putting wheels down on all continents except Antarctica, and participates in the annual Road Boss Rally (http://www.roadbossrally.com.au) a nine-day outback event in Australia.
While this was my first event starting in BC, I have driven through the area on the way to either Alaska or the Northwest Territories on several events starting with Satch Carlson’s 1995 “Rally of the Lost Patrol” and my most current event was the 2016 Alcan5000. I have attended these events as both a competitor and event staff. So the road conditions in the western slopes of the Rockies in February and timing/pauses to seconds vs. hundreds was what I expected.
What was new to me was that the event official speeds and measurement were in Kilometers. The math is the same, and once you set your odometer factor in the rally computer, all the functions of the Alfa TSD-Elite are the same as running in miles, but the instructions do come up quicker in kilometers — thirty-eight percent quicker. This does come into play when you are a “half of a mile” from the next turn, the navigator puts their head down to double check a calculation or set up for the next speed change, only to have 62% of the time to you have trained yourself to expect. This also holds true for the driver. A true learning experience.
Running events in the Northwest is a little different than most of the TSD events conducted by SCCA. First of all, most of the events are not sanctioned by SCCA, the only event that I know, is the Oregon 1000, which is conducted every other year and run under Regional Rules and not the SCCA National RRR (RoadRally Regulations).
When reviewing the General Instructions, all the “normal” terms are there: CAST, Transit Zone, Free Zone, Pause and Time Allowances (TAs). Time Declarations as they are referred are not free. There is a 20 point (in seconds) penalty for any filed TA which was not caused by an “outside influence’ like road construction, delayed due to a train/road blockage or providing public assistance as needed. The philosophy is that you cannot engineer a lower score post-facto through the use of a TA due to issues within your control, missed turn or CAST or sliding off the road into a snow bank. The good thing is that once you take a TA within a Section, only one penalty is applied in that Section no matter how many TAs you need. We were fortunate enough not to need a TA on this event.
The rally instructions were presented in a bound book of 42 pages. After opening the route book, the first thing you see is the Welcome Page which thanked the organizing committee and event Volunteers and sponsors. It also reinforced that the event is run on open public roads and that some of the roads are extremely narrow (and maybe snow and ice covered). All of the Transit and Regularity (TSD) speeds are 10% below posted limits or slower.
The second page is a list of important contact information, which include HAM radio frequency (all event staff have HAM radios and a large number of the competitors which let us communicate local on-coming traffic during the Regularity Sections), phone numbers and addresses of the hotels used and ending location and local hospitals. The next two pages outline Accident Response Guidelines and what actions should be taken if you are first on the scene of an incident. These instructions are very similar to what is provided to the SCCA Solo and Race Stewards, but I have never seen them on an SCCA TSD Road Rally.
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Because the event is divided into Regularity and Transits, there are very few Free Zones listed within a Regularity Section.
Regularity Sections had between three and seven closed controls depending on the length of the Section. Each Section started with a Car Zero Key Time and ended with a Car Zero Key Time at the last instruction. The route book was distributed at Registration, the night before the rally. Navigators then have the ability to calculate perfect time to each instruction and add delta distance between instructions. The ending Car Zero Key Time is used to confirm your math and double check the Rallymaster. If any errors are found in the route book, updates are posted in the morning at the Driver’s meeting. I find this extremely useful, since there are no restarts after a Closed Control, you can use your calculated time to make any minor adjustments to your running time. Control locations are not marked by Checkpoint Signs, but 80% are easy to spot if you look at the right place at the right time, others were so well hidden, I never saw them. Run on-time all the time.
The event organizers had 11 Control teams, a Lead Vehicle and two sweep teams that staffed the 860.16 Kilometer course over two days. They received support for local clubs in BC and several teams from Rainier Auto Sports Club, who bring us the Alcan5000 and No Alibi/Nor’Wester rallies.
Checkpoint time was measured to the 1/10 of a second using Alfa Checkpoint Clocks synced to the Master Clock. Scores were truncated to the whole second. In looking at the score sheets at the end of the first day, the truncation resulted in a 1.9 second “window” for a zero, .9 seconds on either side of a perfect score. Maximum score per Timed Control was 300 points or 5 minutes.
As with any Touring rally, running in the Unlimited Class (Equipped), factor control is key, especially when considering that majority of the Regularly Sections were snow/ice covered and during Sunday afternoon about an inch of new snow fell on the route. Added to these conditions the event used rural roads along the western slope of the Canadian Rockies, which included several “hill climbs,” steep descents and at one point a Caution that stated “Big Exposure,” which meant if you go off here, we might not have enough tow rope to reach your car. Exposures continue for 2KM (1.3Miles). It was a great event. There were sixteen teams (Unlimited and Historic [25 years or older]) running without limit to calculation/measurement equipment, six teams running the Calculator Class, which allowed any distance-measuring device so long as it does not display average speed or calculated target times and any calculating device that is non-programmable and does not directly interface with the distance measurement devise or input unit. Four teams in Paper Class, which does not allow any calculators, pre-printed rally tables or accessory odometers, and eight teams in Novice Class, which ran under the Calculator Class, but limited the number of prior Regional Championship level TSD rallies to three, prior to the 2018 season. In total 34 teams started the event. One team who entered could start the event due to an avalanche that blocked the highway between their home in Alberta and the start of the event.
Marinus and Renee Damm, the winning team, drove a 28-year-old BMW 325iX with a final score of 15 points over 46 controls, second place went to Paul Eklund and Yulia Smolyansky, who were only two seconds behind with a score of 17. Five of the six top teams drove Subaru and all six were all wheel/four-wheel drive.
For details on the event leg scores and information for the 2019 event, check out www.rallybc.com. And checkout a piece by Northern Apex .
