SquareLeft
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2015
- Messages
- 586
- Location
- Southern Ohio, USA
- Car(s)
- 2019 Mazda6 Sport, 2002 Subaru WRX, 1961 Morgan
Just back from working at ARA’s Southern Ohio Forest Rally. My friend Barbara and I worked all four days – We were part of the Tech crew on Wednesday and Thursday, switched to being radio/marshals on Friday and ran two Finish Timing Controls on Saturday. The rally headquarters was in Chillicothe, Ohio and there was a super-special stage there in the city park on Thursday evening. Since the timing equipment was all new this year and I had to work the two finish controls on Saturday, we went down to the park Thursday evening so that I could shadow the finish control captain and see the timer actually working. It’s a pretty slick system – the cars are timed via GPS transmitters and receivers. Controls have tablets and receive data on each car. The tablet displays the car #, start and finish times, stage time and other data. The system can even pick up on any team that jumps the start.
The rally moved about 40 miles south on Friday to use the roads in Shawnee State Forest. Shawnee is classified as a “primitive forest” and the roads reflect that. They’re narrow and not well-maintained; plus, there are almost constant elevation changes. Our SCCA region used Shawnee for ‘performance TSD’ rallies 20+ years ago. Those rallies were really fun but took a tremendous amount of work for a small region like ours. Barbara and I both have ‘ham’ radio licenses and were assigned a marshal/radio location near the end of the ‘Top Gun’ stage. Cell phone coverage is spotty (at best) in mid-western forests, so ham radio operators are very welcome as course workers. Our only real excitement happened when four ladies showed up on horseback. They (somehow…) didn’t know that there was a race in the forest that day. They weren’t happy when we made them turn around and go back the way they came.
Saturday saw the rally move back north to the Zaleski Forest in East-Central Ohio for the final eight stages (like Shawnee the day before, there were four stages, each run twice). The Zaleski stages are similar to the ones in Shawnee, but don’t have as many elevation changes. They do have lots of tight turns and hairpins, though. The roads hadn’t been graded in some time and were rougher than I remember them ever being before. Some overnight rain kept things dicey and the sweep crews worked hard pulling out the unlucky teams that strayed off the stages.
So, who won? 1st place went to Ken Block and Alessandro Gelsomino in a 2019 Hyundai i20 WRC. 2nd was Travis Pastrana and Rhianon Gelsomino in a ’21 Subaru WRX Sti – 38 seconds back. In all fairness, Block did have quite an advantage with the Hyundai. Although it was several years old it was a full-on WRC car. Full entry and results are here: https://www.americanrallyassociation.org/event-results
Some photos and video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=505YjT7xH1w --
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1G0Ae9aDg -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk87yG4gwvI
The rally moved about 40 miles south on Friday to use the roads in Shawnee State Forest. Shawnee is classified as a “primitive forest” and the roads reflect that. They’re narrow and not well-maintained; plus, there are almost constant elevation changes. Our SCCA region used Shawnee for ‘performance TSD’ rallies 20+ years ago. Those rallies were really fun but took a tremendous amount of work for a small region like ours. Barbara and I both have ‘ham’ radio licenses and were assigned a marshal/radio location near the end of the ‘Top Gun’ stage. Cell phone coverage is spotty (at best) in mid-western forests, so ham radio operators are very welcome as course workers. Our only real excitement happened when four ladies showed up on horseback. They (somehow…) didn’t know that there was a race in the forest that day. They weren’t happy when we made them turn around and go back the way they came.
Saturday saw the rally move back north to the Zaleski Forest in East-Central Ohio for the final eight stages (like Shawnee the day before, there were four stages, each run twice). The Zaleski stages are similar to the ones in Shawnee, but don’t have as many elevation changes. They do have lots of tight turns and hairpins, though. The roads hadn’t been graded in some time and were rougher than I remember them ever being before. Some overnight rain kept things dicey and the sweep crews worked hard pulling out the unlucky teams that strayed off the stages.
So, who won? 1st place went to Ken Block and Alessandro Gelsomino in a 2019 Hyundai i20 WRC. 2nd was Travis Pastrana and Rhianon Gelsomino in a ’21 Subaru WRX Sti – 38 seconds back. In all fairness, Block did have quite an advantage with the Hyundai. Although it was several years old it was a full-on WRC car. Full entry and results are here: https://www.americanrallyassociation.org/event-results
Some photos and video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=505YjT7xH1w --
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1G0Ae9aDg -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk87yG4gwvI