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n New England woods, slowing down the race pace
By Benjamin Preston
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Into the woods The author, likely lost during the first leg of the rally. (Juliana Schatz Preston)
An endurance time-speed-distance (TSD) rally is not about whipping hatchbacks through snow-choked woods at 80mph. In fact, outright speed has nothing to do with it. The most successful participants in these rallies practise precision, and they do it for many hours.
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Ted Goddard, a longtime rally aficionado and one of the organisers of the annual Vermont Winter Challenge Rally, which was contested 14-15 February, described it thusly:
"You've got an invite to grandma's house, and she's given you very specific instructions on how to get there. Lunch is at two. She's not going to feed you if you're late, and if you're early, she'll still be at church and you'll have to sit out there in the cold."
Related: How to drive safely on ice and snow.
Among Goddard’s other prescriptions: pay attention to directions. Pack a shovel, a tow rope, extra warm clothes, food, water, flashlights – anything you might need if you were to run off the road and spend most of the night in a field, without cellular-phone reception, waiting for help. Pay attention to directions – a point he really couldn't stress enough.
"This is your first time, so you won't do that well," he said with no malice or judgment.
My sense of pride was rankled. I approached the weekend optimistically, armed with a top-notch navigator – my wife, Juliana, who usually serves as navigator on our frequent long road trips – and a snow tire-shod, four-wheel-drive 1987 Subaru GL wagon.
The Vermont rally is an institution in this part of New England. John Buffum – who, according to Rally Racing News, holds 11 national rally racing titles, making him "the most successful US Rally driver ever" – set up the course. Comprised of three legs, it covered different styles of rally driving: "trap" or logic driving, which tests teams' abilities to solve problems; a map-based format popular in Europe and parts of Canada; and a brisk, straightforward endurance section that challenged teams to follow written directions accompanied by directional symbols called "tulips".
Marc Goldfarb, who, along with his driving partner, Mark Stone, would go on to win the 2015 event in a 2002 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS with 190,000 miles on the odometer, said that strictly limiting stage-duration times was currently the most popular endurance TSD format. Consequently, mistakes, from wrong turns to spin-outs, could result in unwanted points being added to a team’s final score.
Did Goddard also mention that the Vermont rally is run primarily at night? It starts just after 15:00, and the last cars don't roll into race headquarters for the awards ceremony until nearly 03:00. This year, roughly 30 teams participated, a fairly typical showing for the 11-year-old event, Buffum said. Most competitors drove Subarus, though joining these were a smattering of Audis and Fords, and there was even a rear-drive BMW coupe from the late 1980s.
For lovers of snow driving, there are few places better to do it than Vermont in February. Miles of snow-covered roads snake through thousands of forested acres. Even at night, the scenery remains picturesque, with headlights defining pointy church steeples, red barns and covered bridges in the murk. The trees at the roads' edges are plastered with wind-driven snow – the perfect backdrop for Over the River and Through the Woods, or perhaps a sub-zero interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood.
Juliana and I were confident as we began the first leg, making the initial two turns on time and in good spirits. It wasn't long until we were thrown by a Buffum-concocted trap, resulting in a lengthy, undesired detour – a meandering loop completely unrelated to the course. We progressed a little farther on the second leg, but after an hour, returned inexplicably right back where we started. Our fate was shared with several other teams, so we didn't feel so ashamed.
By the third leg, we had more or less grasped direction-following and keeping pace, and were buoyed by the constant presence of other cars that seemed to be going in the same direction as we were. I spun the Subaru twice on downhill curves, as did other competitors. The snowbanks did no damage, and I later learned that much more experienced drivers had also met with the big, powdery mounds.
Juliana only became upset during the first slide. She thereafter accepted a bit of inevitable wheelspin, and actually laughed at one point when a downhill curve sent the car completely sideways at 35mph before I was able to correct with a bit of throttle.
Stone said we picked a tricky first rally, enforcing the impression that we were lucky not to have spent the night marooned in a snowbank. At the race’s conclusion, when Buffum explained the traps and pitfalls he had designed into the course, there were groans from around the room. In hindsight, they had been such obvious things, including one where course officials were placed in such a way as to lure competitors towards an unwanted shortcut.
Adding intensity to the seeming ruse was that the 2015 rally fell on Valentine's Day. There were only a few women in the race, and many bearded men – the latter pale-skinned and wintry-looking. Some remarked that they would never try such an event with their wives, particularly not on Cupid’s holiday. The risk of meltdowns over dubious directions was too great, it seemed. Luckily, Juliana and I avoided severe confrontation, although a few minor spats were unavoidable, almost exclusively over the adherence to directions.
Buffum said that from the ‘60s through the ‘80s, winter rallies thrived across the US. Although numbers have dwindled, the Vermont race suggested how fiercely the surviving events are contested.
"Why don't people road rally anymore? Maybe it's the internet,” Buffum mused. “Maybe people are too busy and have more interesting things to do. Well, we enjoy it, and the snow banks out there are aaawwesome!"
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HIDE CAPTION
Into the woods The author, likely lost during the first leg of the rally. (Juliana Schatz Preston)
An endurance time-speed-distance (TSD) rally is not about whipping hatchbacks through snow-choked woods at 80mph. In fact, outright speed has nothing to do with it. The most successful participants in these rallies practise precision, and they do it for many hours.
Related
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A holiday on wheels
Ted Goddard, a longtime rally aficionado and one of the organisers of the annual Vermont Winter Challenge Rally, which was contested 14-15 February, described it thusly:
"You've got an invite to grandma's house, and she's given you very specific instructions on how to get there. Lunch is at two. She's not going to feed you if you're late, and if you're early, she'll still be at church and you'll have to sit out there in the cold."
Related: How to drive safely on ice and snow.
Among Goddard’s other prescriptions: pay attention to directions. Pack a shovel, a tow rope, extra warm clothes, food, water, flashlights – anything you might need if you were to run off the road and spend most of the night in a field, without cellular-phone reception, waiting for help. Pay attention to directions – a point he really couldn't stress enough.
"This is your first time, so you won't do that well," he said with no malice or judgment.
My sense of pride was rankled. I approached the weekend optimistically, armed with a top-notch navigator – my wife, Juliana, who usually serves as navigator on our frequent long road trips – and a snow tire-shod, four-wheel-drive 1987 Subaru GL wagon.
The Vermont rally is an institution in this part of New England. John Buffum – who, according to Rally Racing News, holds 11 national rally racing titles, making him "the most successful US Rally driver ever" – set up the course. Comprised of three legs, it covered different styles of rally driving: "trap" or logic driving, which tests teams' abilities to solve problems; a map-based format popular in Europe and parts of Canada; and a brisk, straightforward endurance section that challenged teams to follow written directions accompanied by directional symbols called "tulips".
Marc Goldfarb, who, along with his driving partner, Mark Stone, would go on to win the 2015 event in a 2002 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS with 190,000 miles on the odometer, said that strictly limiting stage-duration times was currently the most popular endurance TSD format. Consequently, mistakes, from wrong turns to spin-outs, could result in unwanted points being added to a team’s final score.
Did Goddard also mention that the Vermont rally is run primarily at night? It starts just after 15:00, and the last cars don't roll into race headquarters for the awards ceremony until nearly 03:00. This year, roughly 30 teams participated, a fairly typical showing for the 11-year-old event, Buffum said. Most competitors drove Subarus, though joining these were a smattering of Audis and Fords, and there was even a rear-drive BMW coupe from the late 1980s.
For lovers of snow driving, there are few places better to do it than Vermont in February. Miles of snow-covered roads snake through thousands of forested acres. Even at night, the scenery remains picturesque, with headlights defining pointy church steeples, red barns and covered bridges in the murk. The trees at the roads' edges are plastered with wind-driven snow – the perfect backdrop for Over the River and Through the Woods, or perhaps a sub-zero interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood.
Juliana and I were confident as we began the first leg, making the initial two turns on time and in good spirits. It wasn't long until we were thrown by a Buffum-concocted trap, resulting in a lengthy, undesired detour – a meandering loop completely unrelated to the course. We progressed a little farther on the second leg, but after an hour, returned inexplicably right back where we started. Our fate was shared with several other teams, so we didn't feel so ashamed.
By the third leg, we had more or less grasped direction-following and keeping pace, and were buoyed by the constant presence of other cars that seemed to be going in the same direction as we were. I spun the Subaru twice on downhill curves, as did other competitors. The snowbanks did no damage, and I later learned that much more experienced drivers had also met with the big, powdery mounds.
Juliana only became upset during the first slide. She thereafter accepted a bit of inevitable wheelspin, and actually laughed at one point when a downhill curve sent the car completely sideways at 35mph before I was able to correct with a bit of throttle.
Stone said we picked a tricky first rally, enforcing the impression that we were lucky not to have spent the night marooned in a snowbank. At the race’s conclusion, when Buffum explained the traps and pitfalls he had designed into the course, there were groans from around the room. In hindsight, they had been such obvious things, including one where course officials were placed in such a way as to lure competitors towards an unwanted shortcut.
Adding intensity to the seeming ruse was that the 2015 rally fell on Valentine's Day. There were only a few women in the race, and many bearded men – the latter pale-skinned and wintry-looking. Some remarked that they would never try such an event with their wives, particularly not on Cupid’s holiday. The risk of meltdowns over dubious directions was too great, it seemed. Luckily, Juliana and I avoided severe confrontation, although a few minor spats were unavoidable, almost exclusively over the adherence to directions.
Buffum said that from the ‘60s through the ‘80s, winter rallies thrived across the US. Although numbers have dwindled, the Vermont race suggested how fiercely the surviving events are contested.
"Why don't people road rally anymore? Maybe it's the internet,” Buffum mused. “Maybe people are too busy and have more interesting things to do. Well, we enjoy it, and the snow banks out there are aaawwesome!"
If you would like to comment on this or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
Start your day with our morning email Sign-up today
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