I went out and staked one of the stages today. Special thanks goes out to Rich with Oregon Rally Group for answering all my questions... I had a blast and learned a lot more about Rally as a sport, so I figured I'd share some of that as well as what I did yesterday.
We met up at the Toll Bridge Park out side Hood River and after dividing up stakes, signs, banner tape, porta potties and more signs we headed up into the hills. I would be helping stake out the Gilhouey (pronounced Gil Hooey.... which makes me giggle) stage. This was cool because its one of the stages I wasn't able to see on the Oregon Trail Rally. On the way out, Rich took time to explain things to me and explain a lot about Rally in general. Some things I knew, somethings I didn't and somethings I got clarification on.
Rally's
typically take place on public roads. There are several different types of Rally though.
Rally cross - Happens at the Washington County fairgrounds, or in a field as an example and is marked with cones. The focus here is speed and execution. The course is small and tight, keeping the speeds low. Your penalized for hitting cones or missing a gate. This is a pretty cheap way to get into Rally. The required tech is pretty minimal, a stock car will typically pass easily. The one thing I have seen is that locally they are pretty big on no lifted vehicles. Not saying they wouldn't allow one, but you'd want to check to make sure.
TSD - Time Speed Distance. This is open to any street legal vehicle. You could do this in your Yugo if you have one. They take place on public roads that are open. The focus here is timing and execution and logistics. All cars are given a location to get to, and a time to get there
at. All cars MUST obey speed limits, and at times in order to arrive at the location by their
specific time they actually have to go below the speed limit, or pull over and wait. Cars are penalized for being early or late. The whole concept is to get to the location at the
exact time you are told to be there. There is a club in Portland that has one of these every Friday night I believe. I think I may try and talk Bobbi into trying one of these some time, it sounds like fun and we could do it in her Escape on flat smooth roads, and slow and steady speeds..... She likes that. ;D Anyway, another good cheap way to get into Rally. Do it in your daily driver, and the chance of damaging your car is basically the same as you experience every day on your way to work.
Stage Rally - This is the stuff that makes me get goose bumps
This one will have a bigger impact to your wallet, but with the various classes you can still get in fairly cheap. In fact, as the Navigator you may get in with simply a strong stomach, a bit of sweat, and a leap of faith in your driver. The chance of damage to the vehicle is higher, and as such the tech requirements are higher. You'll need a cage, and while all vehicles must be street legal, the chances of you doing this with your daily driving Carola are very slim. I'm sure its been done though...
Stage Rally's (such as MT Hood Rally, Oregon Trail and Olympus) are more focused on speed. They take place on both open and closed roads. The Rally is broken down into different "Stages". The closed roads sections of a stage are refereed to as "special stages". This is the high speed, catching some air, sliding the corners, and throwing some dirt stuff. The open roads are referred to as the "Transit" and have a TSD element to them. Your given a specific time to arrive at the next stage, can't be early, can't be late. Theres also specific times and
areas your allowed to work on your car ("Service"). There are sections of the race that you can't work on your car, get a flat... tough, you gotta drive on it till the next service.
My duty for the day was to help stake the Gilhouey Stage. We would do both the transit from the main service area, and then the actual special stage section as well. We left Toll bridge park and immediately stopped and drove a stake into the dirt and stapled an arrow. Turn left... ;D We continued this routine along the roads, back down HWY 35 passing Gillhouey and into Odel, past the fairgrounds and then caught Gillhouey coming south. We wound our way up through the houses, farms and orchards, past the gate until we got the the Time control section. There was already a stake in the ground that would alert the teams that they would soon get to the Time Control. They could stop and wait here if they needed. Rich said there would typically be several teams waiting for their time. Next came the actual Time control spot, and then from there, the starting line of the special stage. This is where the magic will begin. ;D
The goal of staking the stage is to make it as safe as possible for the cars to go as fast as possible. We would be putting up arrows at the "instructions" that the driver and co-pilot can key off indicating how the road will flow. The teams are also given a race book (think they called it something else though) that has TULIP notes in them detailing each instruction, giving them an idea of what to expect as they fly through the stage. This is the job of the navigator, and this is why the leap of faith and strong stomach are required. The navi spends the trip basically head down, keeping an eye on the odometer, an eye on the route book, and shouting out directions and features of the road. Typical commands from the navi would be a bunch of gibberish to most of us, but something along the lines of "left 5, over crest into right 3, followed by crest into right 5". I never knew what all that meant, and still don't, but Rich explained it to me a bit. The # refers to the severity of the turn. Theres a whole different language being spoken inside those cars at speed.... I've got a lot to learn in this area.
The leap of faith obviously goes both ways, if the navi calls a turn wrong bad things can happen. Heres some in car during which Chrissie Beavis (who in my opinion is one of the best navi's around) made a wrong call. Tanner Foust recovers and they finish, but this will give you an idea of what its like in the car at speed. Watch Chrissie's head, she barely ever gets to look out of the car. This is where a strong stomach comes into play.
TULIP notes are used in a wide variety of motor sports so perhaps some of you are familiar with them, but for me it was the first time seeing them, and it really helped me get a better understanding of how it all works. Each instruction shown on the stage note has a dot that leads to the arrow. "Your the dot, and you want to get to the arrow" Rich explained. The TULIP notes also have the mileage distance of the instruction, and in the picture with the dot there will also be an indication of where the "caution" may be if there is one.
So, for each instruction we would need to put a stake and an arrow indicating the direction of the road. Rich explained that we want to be very specific with the direction of the arrow as often times you can't see around the corner or over the crest to see where the road goes. A simple left or right would not work, and so throughout the day Rich would advise me as to which direction the arrow go based on the clock. 11 o'clock, 8:30, 2, 1...
In addition to the arrows we would also put up exclamation mark signs showing teams what to be aware of as they approached a "caution". A "caution" is basically something you need to look out for, some place you don't want to end up, a tree to look out for, a tight corner etc. They have 3 different levels of cautions, and with those come 3 different level of signages. For a level one caution you put the exclamation point on the instruction marker below the arrow. For a level two, one on the marker and one right before the actual "caution" (the tree, rock, cliff, what ever). For a level three, one at the marker,
two right before the actual "caution" (One on each side of the road), and then a bunch of banner tape on the caution. This is typically a tree, or a rock from what I have seen.
It has been said, that a nascar driver says the same corner thousands of times, and that a rally driver sees thousands of corners but only once. This is actually a fairly accurate statement, and there are in fact some Rally's that the teams are given the notes for and then sent out to race. The first time they slide through a corner is the first time they have seen that corner. This obviously makes the notes very important. There is a new type of note system being used called jemba notes. A computer, gps and sensor are mounted into a car and a program creates the notes based on the turns, inertia and input from the planners. For MT Hood, they will only be using Tulip notes.
In addition to the notes though, they are giving the teams the ability to have a "recce". This is basically your pre-run. Some races do not have this, some have this but you can only do it in a rental car, and some you can do it in your actual race car. Regardless though, all recce's are run at or below street legal speeds, and basically in a parade lap format. For the special stages the cars would travel at 25 MPH at the most. The concept here is to allow everyone to get one view of the road, allowing no one else an unfair advantage over another team. Teams may have raced this stage in July, but as rally's take place year round your tires, tire pressure, suspension set up may not work the same now. Drivers and navi's can take notes, and see the terrain and make plans on how they want to set up the car. The recce is it though, no other pre-running of any type is allowed. In some races they even have impound times. Times during which no car can move or be touched. Need to finish your brakes? Gotta wait till tomorrow.
We worked our way through the stage putting arrows here and there, and setting up banner tape and signs. We put up banner tape across every quad trail, 4x4 trail (illegal ones I assume
), and road crossing we came across. In addition to the tape we put up signs stating that the road would be closed on Saturday. Along the way we ran into a few people, a couple locals, some hunters preparing for the season, and a couple loggers. At everyone Rich would stop and talk to the people and explain what we where doing, make sure they knew road was be closed, and ask them to pass along the word. In a lot of ways it felt like a forest watch patrol. ;D Along those lines we came across a giant mudding spot, and while we taped it off I explained to Rich the work we have been doing in the Burn. He's from here in Vancouver and seemed pretty appreciative of our efforts. Rally racing suffers from a lot of the same stereo types as off roading and so he appreciated the work we do to correct / improve peoples perception.
After finishing the stage we made our way back to main service area and picked up a porta potty. We had been gone for maybe an hour, and decided that we would drive through the stage back wards to check out our work and then drop this porta pot at the start. We turned on to Gilhouey and came nose to nose with a Yota covered in mud. I had made a comment to Rich about how I didn't think our banner across the mud hole would last past 9PM. Looks like I was about 3 hours off.
Rich stopped and again explained what we where doing, what was going on, road closure, where to go watch... yada yada yada. He also asked the kids to tell their buddies to please not destroy our signs or stakes. They said they would definitely pass on the word and make sure that everyone knew, and oh no... they wouldn't touch the signs or banner tape.
We continued on our way then across the stage and sure enough, we got to the mud hole to find the banner tape and signs had been driven over. With a small sigh we got out an put it back up again.
It's because of these things, that Rally has taken several proactive measures to protect themselves, fans, and even the person who just wanders onto a closed road from getting hurt. Prior to any special stage going "hot" several cars will go through to check the stage. The first would be the advance. They crawl along, checking each sign, each section of banner tape, each caution and make4 sure there is no one on the course who shouldn't be. If there is some one on the course they make sure they are escorted out. They do not just tell you hey you gotta get out of here and send you on your way, they make sure you get off the course. The advance has lights and a siren.
The advance will typically run the stage ~ an hour before it goes hot. After the advance gets done, a series of Zero cars will go through and again check the course. The # of Zero's used on a race will vary, but the ones I have been at seem to usually have 3 zero cars. The first (or triple zero) will go through at like 20% of speed. Again they will stop and fix anything, move people or objects etc. The double zero will then come through at like 40-50% speed. They shouldn't have to stop for anything. If they do, theres a good chance the stage will be called off due to an issue. The last car, the single zero comes through pretty fast. I'd say roughly 80%. The zero drivers are usually retired drivers, they can move. If the zero car has to stop because of anything you might as well pack up and go home. They will most certainly call the stage because of safety. In the event a stage is called, all of the rally cars will proceed through the stage in parade lap fashion at 25MPH or less. Thankfully I have never had this happen. It does happen though.... The same also hold true once the stage is hot. If a safety issue comes up (spectator on the course, car back wards, etc) the stage is called immediately. Any stage that is called is thrown out. If you finished the stage in record time, but then it has to be called... to bad. One year at the Sno Drift Rally a drunken spectator decided it would be good idea to jump on his snow mobile and pace Travis Pastrana as he went by. Travis immediately stopped, they called the stage, and the drunken snow mobiler got a $1000 reminder on why you shouldn't be an idiot. Rally is by its nature a dangerous sport, but the rally organizations I have been involved with take safety as the # 1 concern and take huge steps to protect everyone. Again, seeing how fast you can drive a Subaru through the woods has got some risk, but I would say that Rally is one of the safest events I have been to.
The road looks incredibly challenging and I hope I get to get to see some great action. The road is narrow in spots, lots of turns, and quite a few ledges that you don't want to "off" into. Just enough straight away to get some speed, not to much though. This will be some very technical driving. The wet weather has made it muddy up there. The tire of choice for this section may end up being a mud tire instead of a gravel one. Its an interesting trade off, the entire stage isn't muddy, so maybe some will chose a gravel tire instead. Like every other type of auto racing, a lot of thought goes into tires. With the rain one thing is that at least it wont be so dusty this time!
I'm not exactly sure what my duties will be for Saturday yet. I am hoping for road marshal. Basically I sit there and make sure the crossing stays closed. Good spot to see cars at speed. I may end up being a spectator marshal again though, and the benefit of this is that you get to stand in front of the crowd at spectator stage. These are usually set up on a corner the cars will come sliding through so those are always a good view. Either way I know I'll have a good time, like every other group of racers I have met so far the rally folks are very friendly group of people that are fun to hang out with. I can't wait!
Heres the top 12 from last years MT Hood rally...