By Bob Sonntag & Paul Dornburg
In hopes of boosting the entries, Ernie and Susan Roales moved their annual Bi-State RoadRally from Bridgeport, Illinois, to Vincennes, Indiana, and much closer to the center of the Southern Indiana Region membership base. The change more than doubled the turnout for their August 8th rally!! Eight teams gathered at the George Rogers Clark Memorial in Vincennes. They then spent the day running through the cornfields and woods of southern Illinois. The route was just over 100 miles with ten scored legs.
Three teams ran in the Equipped Class, and third place was only 46 points behind first place. For being the high-tech group, that extra technology may not have been much help. The team of Terry Davis and Bob Sonntag were off to a good start before the laptop battery failed so quickly that their new routine to switch to another laptop, after a battery problem, could not be run. “DAMN!!” is close to what was heard in the car. Their fallback system helped them to a 384.
Dave and Suellyn Lehrschall had their phone, running their Richta GPS Competitor app, mounted to the windshield. The device fell but did not fail. That’s good. An errant screen touch while catching the Apple device put it into the settings screen that Dave had not seen before. That wasn’t good. Keeping up with the route became the focus, and it was not until the post-route gathering that Dave learned to tap the left arrow and BINGO there’s the standard Competitor screen. Team Lehrschall laughed at the simple solution. Because the app was on the wrong screen, they ran the event blind to their scores and could not use Time Allowances. It turned out they didn’t need them. Dave reported that this was the first rally in quite a while that they completed without an off. Team Lehrschall’s 350 was good enough for second in class and was only twelve points behind first.
The best of the A Teams were the son and father team of Deaton and Brian Groves in Brian’s Ford Raptor. They switched roles for this event with Deaton driving. Apparently, the early going had Deaton frequently checking on how dad Brian was handling the navigator duties and offering suggestions. It seems that “what happens in the rally car, stays in the rally car” is a rule not known to Team Groves. There were many smiles as Deaton and Brian laughed through resolving complaints about micro-management on the go and on CAST. They finished with a class winning 338 and their first win in either Member Class. We will see if they stay with this winning configuration.
Four teams ran Class B. That’s all other regular SCCA members. The class was wide open, with usual first-place finishers Ernie and Susan Roales serving as Rally Masters. Paul and Carolyn Dornburg seldom rally. It seems their work on preparing last month’s world-famous Ice Cream Rally sharpened their skills and interest in rallying. As they were navigating the mileage check, a discussion ensued regarding the definition of a “Y” intersection. Their decision to use Carolyn’s definition proved to be the correct choice as they got to the odometer check correctly. Their mileage was somewhat higher than the provided mileage, so a plan was put in place to drive faster than the CASTs. Despite keeping a higher average speed, they were slow at all but one checkpoint. They would finish the day with the best in class and best of all 236. Second in B were Stu and Ben Nathan with a 275. That’s also a score good enough to have beaten everyone in A. Larry and Ryan Pearsall finished third in class with a 740, primarily because of two problem legs. Rob and Melissa Minton rounded out the field, and problems on three legs produced the high score of 1117.
Weekend Members Jim and Linda Whitten ran the route in their Camaro convertible with the top down. It was a sunny summer day, but isn’t that what convertibles are for? There was no rain on the route. However, there were four places where irrigation systems were sweeping over the road. Most of the checkpoints were not identified in the RIs. Would there be checkpoints under the sprinklers? What’s a team to do? Keep the CAST or keep dry? The Whitten solution was to time passing two sprinklers when they sprayed corn, not the road. The other sprinklers were taken at speed. Ah, convertibles are fun! Team Whitten finished the day all smiles, dry, and with a 945.
