Red Clay Rally OFFICIAL

I understand a road rally and have participated in many "rally" type events in my 25 years of driving experience. Those that aren't keeping the pace should be the last ones to leave the start each day so that those that are can actually compete without getting hung up behind the slowpokes. It's how every rally I've ever participated in has been done.

 

Then I would expect your attitude to be different. I would expect you to understand how the entire attitude and actions of the induviduals and teams effect the face of this, your, sport.

 

I would imagine that next year's rally will have some changes to the process.

 

agreed. good first event, with things to improve upon. as a volunteer timekeeper, this was mostly enjoyable for me. Didnt like to have to listen to the park ranger for 20 minutes about the teams blazing though his park. and some may have not been tearing it up, but we were seen as 1, guilty by association.

 

I had to drop out, but what ended up being the release time between teams?

 

Pretty sure 2 mins apart. But they were bunched up in large groups coming into the check points.

 

I hear Florida folks took the title

 

There are finishing positions and prizes. It's a race. The rules say it is not a head to head race. It is a race against the clock. It is still a race

Yes you are correct. And the people that make up those slow sections are the ones who will win the race.

He did it by himself with one truck. He was not in a 50 truck convoy on a trail where truck 14 gets stuck or breaks down and so 15 through 50 have to make up 45 minutes of time. He wasn't sitting through 2 red lights for 40 trucks to go through, etc.

 

Everyone has an excuse, except the people that won.

 

Meh. Till next year.

 

sorry I couldn't go, I really wanted to but was a little weary of having to go as a solo vehicle. Did a lot of people have mechanical issues (reason for the traffic mentioned)? If so, what types of mechanical issues? Were they mostly engine related (old vehicles) or suspension/driveline related (beating on their rigs)?

 

My team didn't go due to me just getting an internship 3 weeks ago and not being able to take off. I wouldn't loved to be there though, looks like it was a good time

 

you missed the point of the rally. on the website/in the the series of emails it said this was a "race of patience", its about following the "rules" (speed limits) to keep events like this possible in the future. My team did the posted speed limit regardless of how ridiculous it seemed and averaged 10mph on the trails unless it was smooth gravel roads then that moved up to 10-20mph.

My team (team 2) got 2nd place.......

I cant tell you how many ass holes i saw blazing past my team on one way roads with on coming traffic..pealing out in front of the locals on small roads and just being ass hats in general. People like that can ruin the entire "overland" / "offroad" community

 

Im sure all of the different delays including the Subaru break down and the closed trail were accounted for and considered in the final scoring. As i said in my previous post my team got second place. We were the first team out on Friday morning and one of the last teams back to camp every night. We almost missed the final at Left Nut we got back so late! I say this this to further support the fact that WAY WAY TOO MANY people treated this like a head to head race. And who wouldn't thats way more fun than a slow paced time trial!! but that wasn't the point of this "rally"

 

Haha your girlfriend told me how pissed off you two were that your partner kept telling you you have to slow down. She said said you guys would back way off and let them ahead just so you can accelerate for a while to break it up

 

To all the people who participated , thank you and I'm glad you all had a good time.

To those who call this a race, please realize the average speed of the entire course to obtain the "Perfect Time" was 24.1MPH so quite literally the opposite of a race. The teams who sped came in around the bottom few teams (minus the mechanical issue teams). The SCCA holds these events, NASA holds these events. It's not hard to understand and you aren't racing the clock. The problem here was people arriving WAY TOO early. To each checkpoint. The Subaru breaking was accounted for and each team who arrived to Day 1 checkpoint 3 was given a negative 120 points which equaled an hour.

Of the 12,934 total points accrued by the teams 9,678 were due to arriving early to a checkpoint.

I drove the route in a truck with oversize tires, a roof top tent and no sway bar, and enjoyed myself at that leisurely 24.1mph.

The majority of the mechanical problems I saw vehicles having were brakes. People replacing pads, calipers, and cylinders constantly throughout the route.

Of 31 teams to begin the rally, 23 finished.

Based on the feedback, registration will fill up next year before I even open it up to the ones who didn't compete this year.

 

Any consideration to adding the Tread Lightly component to this. I've looked at some of the videos, especially the hill climb at the top of HC. It looked like the forest service was filling it with debris to prevent people from using it. A lot of these videos bring a lot of the wrong kind of attention

 

That wasn't part of the prescribed route, and the majority of our competitors practice tread lightly principles.

 

We're those teams disqualified?

 

haha very true, the pace was tough at times because all you wanted to do was race each other.

She wanted to blast through a lot of the forest roads because thats what we normally do.