What is Rally?

(exerpted from )

Like soccer, it’s big in Europe. Unlike soccer, it’s exciting.

It’s called Rally, a motorsport that pits seasoned professional drivers against garage mechanics, takes place in dirt, snow, gravel and mud and places an emphasis on driver skill over flat-out speed in ever-changing conditions.

To get a handle on what Rally is, and why it promises to be the next big thing in America’s fascination with things that go fast and win ugly, we spoke to JB Niday, managing director of Rally America, the sport’s sanctioning body in the U.S.

“Why is Rally exciting?” Niday said in response to a question only a novice could ask. “Because of the extreme nature of the sport -- it’s the only form of motorsports where you see the cars going sideways all the time.”

[To really get an idea of why Rally is exciting, check out the videos at Team O'Neil, the premier Rally instruction school, located in New Hampshire's White Mountains.]

Rally races are staged like time trials in the Tour de France, another European sport catching fire in the New World. Cars are released in one minute intervals; the competition is against the clock, but the real challenge is the second-by-second challenge of running the car through the small, tight courses that average between 4 and 20 miles.

“We’re going sideways on purpose, because it’s the fastest way around the corner,” Niday said.

Rally America is sponsoring eight national and three regional championship series in 2005 that include a total of 25 events. National events are run over two days and are comprised of 12 to 15 individual stages. Sno*Drift, the first national event, was run in January, and the Oregon Trail race will be held April 22-24 [check Rally America’s site for details]

Rally cars are team-driven. The driver is aided by a co-driver, or navigator, who’s job it is to relay turn and course information while the car is shimmying through turns and switchbacks at over 60 miles an hour.

One of the challenges built into Rally is that the driving team haven’t run the course in competition. “There’s no practice,” Niday said. “They haven’t seen the roads, the co-driver is reading route instructions to the driver as they go down the road.”

Because cars are running so close together, the physical course actually changes during the trial, Niday said, adding the element of surprise and stomach dropping tension to Rally.

“Someone will go around a corner and yank out a rock the size of a microwave,” Niday said. “All of a sudden the line you were going to take isn’t there any more.”

Rally is more exciting than traditional motorsports for spectators, as viewing areas are positioned up close to the action.

“You get up close -- we put spectator corners somewhere exciting – where they can see a jump or a pirouette through a hairpin. Whenever you’re watching a sport with a 50% attrition rate, you’re going to see something exciting now and then, you’re gonna see a lot of cool stuff,” Niday said.

Oh yeah, attrition. Niday said flat-out crunch time and mechanical breakdowns claim a staggering number of victims at a Rally event. “Half the time you don’t make it home with the car you brought,” he said.

Even cars that don’t bail out completely take a beating. Niday estimates that each event costs its team about $5,000 in maintenance.

Yet despite that high number, Rally attracts a democratic base of competitors, thanks to the six classes of cars that can enter events. While some cars cost well over $150,000 just to get to the starting line, Niday said the average is about $25K for a Regional car and $75K for a National entry. There are about 1,000 Rally competition cars in the United States.

Rally is broken down into two broad classes of cars – “Open” and “Production,” each of which is made up of three categories.

Very broadly speaking, Rally cars are overachieving compact cars, such as modified Subaru Imprezas, Mitsubishi Evos, Dodge Neon SRTs and VW Golfs. Again, also put roughly, category and class are determined by engine size, whether they are turbocharged or have two-wheel or all-wheel drive. [For a comprehensive article on Rally car types, check out this SCCA article.]

Because of the wide range of specs for Rally cars, the sport attracts everyone from “a college kid who put together a car with his buddies in a garage,” Niday said, to top competitors, “somebody who goes to European driving schools, and has a budget of half million a year.”

Niday, however, offers himself as an extreme example of how someone can get into Rally on a budget. “My first car cost a thousand dollars – it was a Ford Fiesta, prepped and ready to go in 1998,” he said.

Another feature that makes Rally exciting is that all cars run on the same track on the same day – only their times are segregated – so spectators are watching everyone from the college kid to the guy with a Ford Fiesta to a half million dollar machine match their skills against the same trail, one minute after the other.

This is part of the reason why Niday thinks Rally is poised to strike big in America. “Your little circle track guy can’t go up and see how he did against one of his NASCAR heroes because they didn’t race on the same track on the same day,” he said.

And while the cars can reach top speeds of 120 to 135 miles an hours on the straightaways, the cup goes not to the fastest car, but to the best driving team. "If you've got the 20th fastest car you could win," Niday said. "It's about the drivers -- and the teamwork between the driver and the co-driver."

“Most people in America would be fans of Rally if they only knew about it,” Niday said, and there’s reason to believe more people are going to get a taste of Rally excitement later this year, when the races get televised.

Rally America has just signed an agreement with cable channel OLN [Outdoor Life Network] to televise the eight national championship races, beginning in October, and will cap off coverage with a season-in-review special.