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(From SPORTS CARS ILLUSTRATED, October 1958)
"Why this road and not some other?" Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both. - Robert Frost.
UNDOUBTEDLY he didn't realize it...but Jules Verne was the father of the rally when he invented "Around the World in Eighty Days." Phineas Fogg ran one of the world's longest rallies - the "find your own route" kind - with only his time limit at the finish line to worry about. That he came in under the deadline is history ...and the fact that he was his own navigator (he didn't have to do any driving) is firmly established. Not so well recorded is the history of more conventional rallies - the kind that use automobiles - but it is known that competitive events were held in Europe before the turn of the century. And in the United States, just after the turn of the century, early efforts such as the Glidden Tours were forerunners of this currently popular form of automotive sport.
Now, there may be an SCI reader somewhere within our ever-shrinking world who doesn't know what a sports car rally is. For him we quote one possible definition from the rallyist's "bible", Sports Car Rallies, Trials and Gymkhanas: "A rally is a form of automotive test in which cars leave a starting point individually, at a carefully recorded time, and are directed to follow a more or less complicated route to a finish- at which point all the entrants 'rally'." Or...think of the bus driver who guides his vehicle across several states, tackling problems of traffic and weather, but arriving on time at all the way-stations and his terminal point. Turn our bus driver into a sports car driver, give him a strange route to travel with all information withheld until one minute before starting time, expect him to be on-time-to-the-second at all of his unknown "way-stations" (called controls or checkpoints) and then multiply him by 50 or 75 for competition and you come up with a pretty accurate description of a Sunday-afternoon rally in this country. But not so in the big continental championship rallies of Europe. And not so in the 'Round Australia 10,000-mile endurance run. For rally variations are infinite and many versions have developed 'round the world. And the influence of a country's automotive industry, its topography and its traffic laws is reflected in the widely-differing "rules of the game."
Let's start our comparisons at the "summit" so to speak. The world series of rallying is the European "Touring Championship" circuit authorized each year by the worldwide governing body of automotive sport, the F.I.A, (Federation lnternationale de l' Automobile, with headquarters in Paris). This circuit consists of 12 or so events each year - only one assigned to any individual country - that are truly international and that pull the cream of the continental rallyists and rally cars. And, as opposed to U.S. practices, goodly sums of prize monies are offered and fully-factory sponsored teams are the rule, rather than the exception. Truly tough challenges of man-and-machine, these rallies average 2500 miles in length and usually utilize most of the rugged Alpine passes in one method or another. And until recently, continental events reflected the "no maximum speed limit" of the majority of European countries and became tests of flat-out driving to make a hard-to-meet maximum-time deadline. ..but with no penalty whatsoever for arriving at any given point early. In fact, most of the time schedules (and the roads chosen) were so tough that it was almost impossible to remain penalty-free, no matter how fast the speed and how hard the driving. Those lucky enough to "get a pocket full of time" made the most of it to make any necessary repairs to their cars. ..or to snatch sorely-needed rest; little-or-no sleep was all a part of the plan of the organizers.
But this "endurance run" alone wasn't enough. Soon, all of the big rallies were adding speed tests of all kinds. Timed hillclimb sections of the worst of the mountain passes became commonplace...and it was a sad affair in the summer events that didn't have all-out timed laps, if not races by classes, on one-or-more of Europe's most famous courses. In England, things were different. Timed laps on race courses were all well and good. ..but high speed on public roads? No. The tight little isle had too much traffic per mile of narrow road for any such freedom of movement - not to mention a lack of "everybody's a race driver" spirit found in many of the continental countries and so the British rallies ran within fairly narrow time limits, making it mandatory that rally cars arrived neither too late, nor too early. It was after the Hitler war that returning G.I.s helped swell the ranks of the few pre-war sports car enthusiasts in this country...and it was around 1950 that the rally began to be something not pertaining to politics.
But naturally enough, with traffic conditions and traffic laws as found in the United States, our rallies took shape along the English lines, as opposed to the all-out continental lines. And as certain of the citizenry, not to mention the gendarmerie, failed to be en rapport with "those funny little furrin cars" tearing around the back roads, even more stringent time brackets were set up and all specified average speeds were well below posted legal limits. Meanwhile, rallies were being organized in such far-off places as South Africa and Australia. With no speed-limit problems (the roads themselves took care of that) these events were patterned along the continental European endurance lines. .. and even more so. South African big game provided added thrills to bogged-down Johannesburg enthusiasts, while it was considered par for the course by down-under rallyists to have several cars lose personal bouts with kangaroos in the " 'Round Australia" run. With natural hazards such as these, plus the unbelievably rugged road conditions - from mountain passes to long stretches of desert, from tropical torrents to dust-choked dry river beds - there was never a reason for stating a minimum time to be taken, it was always a fight for all concerned to get to the finish line with the car in one piece and to hope that the maximum allowable time wasn't exceeded. That it is possible is proved each year by several entrants...perhaps 5 to 10 crew-and-car combinations make it while 100 to 150 do not. It's that tough.
So much for the bottom of the southern hemisphere. Not to be outdone in any way, the top of the northern hemisphere is also a beehive of rally activity. In the Scandinavian Peninsula, the candidate for international honors is the famous "Rally to the Midnight Sun." The Swedish and Norwegian tugged mountainous terrain, plus an inexhaustible source of ice and snow, make this a "drivers" rally in the best European tradition and that battle is almost always to not exceed the set maximum time allowed...with the problem of arriving "on the nose" being of secondary importance. In North America, Canada and Alaska follow along the lines of the "Midnight Sun" events but with the being-exactly-on-time feature of much more importance. The geographical references could go on and on as there are indeed "rallies 'round the world."
It will be much more worthwhile to examine some of the prime examples in a little greater detail. Probably the two best-known rallies in the world are the championship "Monte Carlo" and "Alpine" events. With a few exceptions, they both have run every year, not counting time out for World War I and World War II. And both were all-out "road races" with every contender trying to make the next checkpoint as early as possible, not only to avoid the "late" penalty, but to gain that extra time for rest and repairs. There has been a big change since 1955, however. Following the Le Mans disaster of that year, French authorities clamped down on speed events of all kinds; especially those run on public roads. The 1955 Alpine Rally was canceled, as were most of the other scheduled events for the remainder of the year. In 1956, the "Monte" and the " Alpine" both ran ...but with new speed maximums set for French roads and with many known or unknown control points provided to catch the unwary contestant running ahead of time and to penalize him severely or even to disqualify him. Thus exact timing became more of a problem than ever before and to this extent, these events (at least while using French roads) became a little more akin to the big time English and American rallies. But not too much akin.
The championship continental rallyists have always been race drivers at heart (and in many cases, race drivers in fact) and so if the speeds were held down on the roads, they were upped in the special tests that put the spice into an otherwise possibly bland dish. The 1958 Alpine Rally was a good example of this. The exacting 2800-mile rally route was made up of the highest and most dangerous mountain passes of the Italian, Swiss and French Alps. Added to this were four timed hillclimbs and four speed tests on four famous European race courses. The Rallies contestants were required to maintain a minimum average of 42 mph of flat courses ...and on such "rapid circuits as the banked bowl at Monza, Italy, a blistering 95 mph average was the slowest acceptable. In the United States, things were certainly different. Where European crews received rally route-books in advance, and where those with time available practiced on the route as much as possible, the United States rallyists were in the reverse position. In the Sports Car Club of America championship events - and in almost all of the shorter Sunday -afternoon events - instruction sheets were handed to each competing car as they pulled up to the starting line to depart in one-minute intervals. Here, with specified average speeds set by the rally organizers to preclude any violation of posted speed limits, the contestants found they had theirs hands full just trying to keep to the mandatory average speeds and to not get lost.
Experienced rallyists everywhere have found that all the fancy watches, calculators and special odometers in the world are useless when the competing car is off course. And so, while American rallies are won by running "to the second", the number one rule is still don't get lost. The editor of the English Autosport magazine, Gregor Grant, once said - after a visit to this country - that our rallies must all be organized and sponsored by makers of watches. Because of our placing such importance on rally timing, he had good cause for receiving that impression. But, if this were to be true, then surely we could counter with our opinion that English rallies must surely be sponsored by the makers of maps. For the great majority of British events are of the map coordinate type. As opposed to the usual rally instruction sheets used over here (1.2 miles- turn right at Heathcliff Place, 2.4 miles - bear left at fork, 4.7 miles straight ahead onto concrete highway.)
English rallyists find their way from point to point by numbered map coordinates. A sample sheet might read like this: #1 -M.R. 181/998326 #2 -M.R. 181/001278 #3 M.R. 181/984278 Without the corresponding map, these listings seem just so much gibberish. Actually, they indicate exactly how far up on the map and how far across the map to look for the desired spot. ..much as we in this country use the indexes of our familiar oil-company maps to find that Toadebottom, N.Y., is somewhere near "B-5". The English maps are of such a scale, and with a great enough number of index lines, that specific spots can be so located within yards. So, English rallyists maintain their average speeds while traveling from town to town and point to point...with some of the "points" in extremely tricky places. For example, consider this famous case that was accepted as "cricket" by the organizers and contestants. The desired point to be located and checked-in to, was actually in a cave about 50 feet below the surface point indicated by the map references. Of course, these index lines could not give information in the third dimension (depth or height) and so great was the frustration until the smarter entrants began exploring the hillside. Another little gem to plague the British rallyist is that when he finds his point-of-destination on the map, he must then run a "find your own route" rally to that point. And many a fine wavy line on the map, indicating the shortest way via back roads, can be misleading to the point that required average speeds can't be maintained and our sad contestant learns that smarter rallyists have taken the longer but faster way around.
Back in the northern hemisphere, the only North American rally currently on the F.I.A. calendar, since the demise of the famous and popular Great American Mountain Rally, is the Canadian Winter Rally. This provides the European touch of rugged roads and a battle against nature, while still holding to rigid time limits all along the rally route. But... lest the impression get around that Canadian rallies are all work and no play, consider these gems exerpted from the supplementary regulations of the 1956 "Rally Quebec". With the full understanding of confusion that arises when a rallyist tries to ask his way of a non-rallyist - they never can understand why the rallyist doesn't know where he's going. ..nor where he's been - a number of handy phrases were printed out in French to assist the many English-only-speaking entrants while traversing the French-Canadian hinterlands: I realize that this road does not go any where. Je sais que cette route ne mene nulle part. I do not know where I am going but I must leave now or I will be late. Je ne sais pas ou je vais mais je dois partir ou je serai en retard. I know I haven't got a flat tire but I am changing my wheel anyway. Je sais que je n'ai pas de crevaison ma is je change quand meme de roue. I am not crazy, I am driving in the Quebec Rally. Non, je ne suis pas fou, je prends part au Ralliement Quebec. To conclude, it's only right to describe an ambitious rally project in the making.
Up in Fairbanks, Alaska, Polly Johnson, the beauteous president of the Alaska Sports Car Club, is trying to get a cosponsor in the U.S.A. for an Alcan Highway Rally. In those parts, they think nothing of driving several hundred miles in 30-to-40 below-zero weather to reach the start of an event. So, it's no wonder they "think big." Come to think of it, Alaska will soon be the biggest state in the union and Texas will have to take aback seat on big projects. And if Polly can pull this one off, this Alcan rally will be the first ever run from one state to another and encompass some 1900 miles in the process.
European rallyist' come prepared for emergency and often find it. Tackle for pulling the car out of ravines is almost a standard rally accessory. Timing at check points is handled in a professional manner in the Monte Carlo Rally. The Longines computer timer prints an unarguable leg record. Professional equipment for the Monte rally Includes lighted magnifying box for map reading, detailed maps, two chronometers, photo-timer, SpeedPilot.
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