It’s been more than a decade since Red River Region ran its last road rally. But, on February 20th, we ventured back into territory virtually unknown to most of our members with our Day in the Park Rally. The rally route covered a distance of about 55 miles on the back roads of north Louisiana and included a drive-thru tour of Lake Claiborne State Park. From there, the teams passed through a couple of small towns before winding up back at the starting point about an hour and 15 minutes after starting.
Since most entrants had never rallied before, I extended the starting interval between cars to two minutes rather than the typical one minute. But, even with that long interval, some of the teams reported seeing other teams while they negotiated their way through the park.
I made this one a super-simple GTA with 19 questions that they had to find answers to along the way. I must have made those questions too easy, though, because five of the nine teams got all of them right – including a bonus question that I had thrown in for good measure. So, I had to resort to the total distance traveled and time elapsed to determine the winners.
The winning team consisted of first-time rallyists Kevin Larsen, Brien Custer, and back-seat observer Zofia Butler. And get this. They weren’t in the type of car that you would typically expect to see participating in a road rally. They were in a Ferrari!
Although there were only nine cars, I was not disappointed with the turnout because, as I said, this was the first time in over a decade that we had run any rally. However, those who did participate all said it was a lot of fun, and they had a great time doing it. They were all asking when we would run another one! I told them it would probably be sometime this summer when it’s just too blasted hot and muggy here to be outside all day autocrossing.
From RReNews: In writing with John, as we reached out to learn more about his event, he shared, “Again, thank you for your interest in what our little Region is trying to do to revive its long-dormant rally program. At this point, it’s hard to speculate whether we’ll ever be able to get back to having a full-scale TSD rally program. But, for now, at least, a few GTA rallies will at least introduce more people to the program and, I hope, build up enough interest that we can expand it in the future. For too long, our Region has been strictly an autocross club and it’s long past time for us to get back to doing more than just that.” The RReNews Clan is encouraged by those words, and we wish the Red River Region all the best on their road back to rallying!
